Piedmont tectonic belts are rich of oil and gas resources, however the intense tectonic stress and broken formation may cause great drilling problems in piedmont structures such as borehole collapse, lost circulation and gas cutting. Through analysis of in situ stress properties, bedding structure and mechanical characteristics, wellbore instability mechanism was expounded from rock mechanics, ...

Optimization of drilling fluid parameters such as mud weight, salt concentration, and temperature is essential to alleviate instability problems during drilling through shale sections. The selection of suitable mud parameters can benefit from analyses that consider significant instability processes involved in shale-drilling–fluid interactions. This paper describes the development of analytical...

The continuous development of global economy with decreasing in available hydrocarbon sources and increasing discovery and extraction costs due to decrease in-situ oil and gas reservoir, displays the necessity of using new techniques for the improve rate of penetration and productivity in well. Nanotechnology has already contributed significantly to technological advances in the energy industri...

Kick occurrence is a possible event during a drilling process. It is required to be handled immediately using a well control method to avoid blowout, financial losses and damages to the drilling crew. Several methods including driller, wait and weight, and concurrent are applicable in the drilling industry to control a well during a kick incident. In this study, typical well control methods wer...

An Offshore China/South China Sea operator wanted to optimize the use of rotary steerable drilling assembly, simplify and reduce operational steps, and provide a larger reservoir wellbore. The operator elected to drill a single 8.5” wellbore and, in order to address a variety of issues and potential problems, change from a Cloud Point Glycol Drilling Fluid to a DrillIn Fluid (DIF) at the reserv...

[1] Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Hole 1301A was drilled, cased, and instrumented with a long‐term, subseafloor observatory (CORK) on the eastern flank of the Juan de Fuca Ridge in summer 2004. This borehole is located 1 km south of ODP Hole 1026B and 5 km north of Baby Bare outcrop. Hole 1301A penetrates 262 m of sediment and 108 m of the uppermost 3.5 Ma basaltic basement in an are...

Amine compounds are believed to have acceptable results regarding their use as clay swelling inhibitor and corrosion inhibitor additives in drilling fluids. It is crucial to know the capability of amine compounds to enhance the thermal stability of drilling fluid; herein, a water-based fluid composed of biopolymer and other additives as the proper representatives of muds used in the pay zone se...

This paper presents a wellbore-stability study of the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD) research borehole located near Parkfield, California, USA. In the summer of 2005, the SAFOD borehole was drilled successfully through the active trace of the San Andreas Fault (SAF) in an area characterized by fault creep and frequent microearthquakes. In this study, we report how the analysis o...