The ever increasing cost and the escalating challenge in the search for oil and gas reserves impacts on the need for engineered success in all aspects of well design. The industry has a perception that one of the commonest ways of reversing the success process is caused by the failure of drilling fluids engineers to provide solutions that result in highly productive wells. In other words “it’s the mud’s fault” when a well does not reach the expected production rates. In some cases this could be a correct assumption, but we will discuss the processes and methodologies that can be applied to try and prevent the fluid and well engineers getting into this position.
Reducing formation damage to zero can be very difficult, however it can be significantly lowered by following simple principles. Designing the correct bridging package should be seen as a very cost effective and simple step in drastically improving a fluids performance, the presentation will explain this straightforward but under utilised process. The more complete the reservoir description, the easier it is for the fluids engineer to design a fluid with a much lower risk of formation damage. This in turn makes the verification testing more representative of what is found down hole. If certain important parameters and conditions are not known, we will discuss how we can measure, estimate and simulate them. We will describe the equipment that is now available that will accurately determine pore throat sizes, measure permeability, analyse mineralogy and ion content of formation and reservoir fluids, as well as accurately quantify Drill-in, completion fluids or post treatment performance. All of this will help to provide assured high productivity.
The one idea to take away is that if the correct information is available its relatively straight forward to apply certain processes to fluid design which can have a huge beneficial effect on well productivity.