Basic Drilling Engineering

Prepared by

Mohamed Rafat
+2 01146457589
Course Contents:
 Introduction
 Petroleum Geology
 Formation Pressures and properties
 Abnormal Pressure
 Pore Pressure Prediction
 Leak Off test
 Overburden & Fracture Pressure
 Well Planning Criteria
 Well Planning Objective
 Classification of Well Types
 Planning Process
 Rig Components
 Types of rigs
 Power Systems
 Hoisting System
 Rotating System
 Circulating System
 Rig Personnel & Rig Calculations
 Drilling Bits
 Bit Types, Bit selection and Dull Grading
 Drilling Fluids
 Functions of Mud
 Mud Types
 Drilling Fluid Properties & Components
 Mud Contamination
 Field Tests
 Drilling Fluids Hydraulics
 Cement
 Manufacture of Cement
 Cement Additives
 Conventional Cement Job
 Multi-Stage Cementing
 Special Cement operations
 BHA
 Drill Pipe, Drill collar and HWDP
 Stabilizers
 Reamers
 Subs
 Directional Drilling
 Casing Design
 Types and functions
 Setting Depth Selection
 Kick Tolerance
 Internal and External Pressure Profiles
 Practical Casing Design
 Drilling Problems
 Stuck Pipe
 Lost Circulation
 Mud Contamination
 Cement Problems
 Drilling Optimization & Best Practice

 Well Control
 Causes of kick
 kick warning signs & indicators
 Soft & Hard shut in
 Top hole drilling
 Principles of kill methods
 Driller’s method
 Wait & weight method
 Gas migration
 Well Control Equipment
 Kill Sheet & Gauge Problems
History of oil drilling
 History of oil drilling

Oil well drilling technology has evolved from the ancient

spring pole to percussion cable-tools to the modern rotary
rigs that can drill miles into the earth.
 History of oil drilling
Drilling or “making hole” began long
before oil or natural gas were anything
more than flammable interests found
seeping from the ground.

For centuries, digging by hand or shovel

was the best technologies that existed to
pry into the earth’s secrets.

The Chinese drilled with bamboo Natural gas seeps – when ignited –
spring poles as early as 450 A.D.
created folklore and places called
“burning springs”.
 History of oil drilling

Standard cable-tool derricks stood 82 feet tall and were powered by a steam boiler
and engine using a “walking beam” to alternately raise and lower drilling tools –
which frequently had to be sharpened in a forge.
 History of oil drilling
Drilling technology advanced when the spring pole harnessed the resiliency of
a bent tree to assist in pummeling a hole into the ground to find water. Ancient
histories record the technique, which is still used in some corners of the world.

While repeatedly kicking down a stirrup was primitive and slow, the spring
pole’s rope and chisel were practical drilling technologies.

In 1802 in what is now West Virginia, salt brine drillers David and Joseph
Ruffner took 18 months to drill through 40 feet of bedrock to a total depth of 58
feet using a spring pole.

The Ruffner brothers drilling creativity and innovation made the Kanawha
River Valley a major salt manufacturing and distribution center in the early
1800s.
 History of oil drilling
“The Ruffner brothers’ well was the first well
known to have been ‘drilled,’ as distinct from
‘dug,’ in the Western Hemisphere,” notes J.E.
Brantly in the History of Oil Well Drilling.

The well’s historic significance rests on the

“development of well drilling tools and
practices, which became almost immediately
standard equipment used by many other well
drillers in the new salt industry.”
There was money to be made from brine wells.
The rapidly growing number of settlers in the
frontier needed a lot of salt to preserve food.
However, sometimes a good well would be The Ruffner brothers’ tools for
fouled with the intrusion of unsought and their spring pole probably
unwanted oil. The rainbow sheen and pungent consisted of a manila line —
and a variety of chisels.
smell of oil was bad news to brine drillers.
 History of oil drilling
The advent of cable-tool drilling introduced the wooden derrick into the
changing American landscape. Using the same basic notion of chiseling a
hole deeper and deeper into the earth.

However, adding the miracle of steam power and clever mechanical

engineering, wells could be drilled far more efficiently.

Frequent stops were needed to remove the chipped-away rock and other
material, bail out water – and sharpen the bit. Bull wheels and hemp rope
repeatedly hoisted and dropped heavy iron drill strings and a curious
variety of bits deep into the borehole.
 History of oil drilling
Oil was still an adversary to those in search of either fresh water or brine.
However, clever businessmen like the Ruffner brothers and Samuel Kier
of Tarentum, Pennsylvania, learned to profit from this oil.

It had long been recognized that oil could be collected and used as a
medicine, lubricant, and even a foul-smelling, smoky illuminant.
American Indians gathered oil by using blankets to soak it up from
natural seeps. The Ruffner brothers sold their oil to marketers of patent
medicines and lubrication products.
 History of oil drilling
A decade before the birth of
the petroleum industry,
Samuel Kier of Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, sold 50-cent,
half-pint bottles of
Pennsylvania “Rock Oil”
proclaiming its “Wonderful
Medical Virtues.”
Kier’s advertisements Oil from natural seeps had been used as a
featured wooden cable-tool balm by Native Americans. In 1848, Samuel
Kier bottled and sold “Rock Oil”
derricks drilling brine wells.
proclaiming its “Wonderful Medical
When a Yale chemist, Virtues.”
Benjamin Silliman, found
that oil could be distilled into
a kerosene illuminant, the
world changed forever.
 History of oil drilling

Inspired entrepreneurs formed the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company with

the idea of using cable tool drilling to extract oil they hoped to find near
Pennsylvania’s known oil seeps at Oil Creek near Titusville. It worked,
and the petroleum age was born.

Kier soon abandoned his patent medicine and went into the kerosene
refining business, buying all the oil he could get.
 History of oil drilling
“Like most inventions, the oil industry grew out of a need.

With the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, people were looking for a better way
to light up the night. Candles were old-fashioned and whale oil had become
steadily more expensive as whale populations were decimated by whalers.

People were also looking for good lubricant for the machinery the Industrial
Revolution was producing.

Scientists supplied the technology for extracting lighting and lubricating oils from
coal and petroleum hydrocarbons.

The lighting oil was called kerosene and was used in a cheap lamp “invented by a
pharmacist in England ~ with the help of a plumber”*
The petroleum industry grew through the
1800s ~ becoming a leading international
 Formation
Pressures & Properties
Formation Pressure
 Formation Pressures
1) Normal Formation Pore Pressure – equal to the hydrostatic
pressure of water extending from the surface to the subsurface
formation of interest.

2) Subnormal Formation Pore Pressure – any formation pressure that

is less than the corresponding pore fluid hydrostatic pressure.

3) Abnormal Pore Pressure – defined as any formation pore pressure

being greater than the hydrostatic pressure of the water occupying the
formation pore spaces. Abnormal pore pressure is often called
suprapressure, overpressure, and sometimes, geopressure.
 Abnormal Pressure
Affect well planning in many areas:

 Casing and tubing design

 Mud weight and type selection

 Casing setting depth selection

 Cement planning

Well costs increase significantly with

geopressure
 Abnormal Pressure
Formation Water Pressure Gradient Example Area
Fresh Water 0.433 psi/ft, 8.3 ppg Rocky Mountain and Mid-continent

Brackish Water 0.438 psi/ft, 8.4 ppg Most Sedimentary Basins Worldwide

Salt Water 0.442 psi/ft, 8.5 ppg Most Sedimentary Basins Worldwide

Normal Salt Water 0.452 psi/ft, 8.7 ppg North Sea, South China Sea

Salt Water 0.465 psi/ft, 8.9 ppg Gulf of Mexico, USA

Salt Water 0.478 psi/ft, 9.2 ppg Some Areas of Gulf of Mexico
Normal and Abnormal Pore Pressure

Normal Pressure Gradients

West Texas: 0.433 psi/ft
Gulf Coast: 0.465 psi/ft
Depth, ft

Abnormal
Pressure
Gradients

10,000’
Pore Pressure, psig
 * Pore
Pressure
Gradients

* Fracture
Gradients

* Casing
Setting
Depths

10.1- 15
 ORIGI NS
OF
ABNORMAL PRESSURES
 Pore Pressure during normal compaction

Por• Pr•••ur•

-------------- -------- -_ 1 --_ j'_ _ J_ _ _ J_

f•o1 _. ' 111PI t• f U•U el 't

Sediment Pore Flul-d

o••n•

2/19/2019 20
 HIGH PRESSURE

NORMAL PRESSURE

Hydrostatic pressure gradient is lower in gas or oil than in water.

Abnormal Pressure 10.1- 21
When crossing faults it is possible to go from normal
pressure to abnormally high pressure in a short interval.
Abnormal Pressure 10.1- 22
 Salt I Shale Diapirs effects on Formation Pressure

Osmosis effect
I Paleopressured sands bec ause of
salinity
differences

Salt I Shale intrusion causes stresses

in formations, and impermeability
preve nts drainage of pressures
 Methods for Geopressure Prediction and Calculation
METHOD WHEN WHAT HOW

SEISMICS PRE DRILLING Interval velocities From reflection times

to transit times
DRILLING WHILE DRILLING ROP, WOB, MW, Drilling exponent
PARAMETERS HOLE SIZE, RPM Sigmalog
CUTTINGS WHILE DRILLING CUTTINGS Characteristics and
ANALYSIS size of drilled cuttings
TEMPERATURE WHILE DRILLING MUD Measurement of mud
TEMPERATURE temperatures in and
out of the well
WELL BEHAVIOUR WHILE DRILLING Overpulls, Anomal ies in
reaming, drilling parameters values,
break, gas salinity control
detection, torque,
water influx
MWD- LWD WHILE DRILLING Resistivity and Resistivity and "transit
LOGGING Sonic Log time"
WIRE LINE LOGS POST DRILLING Resistivity and Resistivity and "transit
Sonic Log time"
 Formation Kicks

Pf = 0.052 ρm TVD + SIDPP

 Overburden Pressure

Overburden Pressure

THE BULK DENSITY CONCEPT

ρb = φ · ρfl + (1 – φ) · ρmax

= +
Overburden Pressure
 Fracture Formation Pressure
Fra ctu re Pressu re
Definition and Mechanism
Fracture pressure is the pressure in the wellbore at which a formation will crack
The stress within a rock can be resolved into three principal stresses. A
formation will fracture when the pressure in the borehole exceeds the least of
the stresses within the rock structure. Normally, these fractures will propagate in
a direction perpendicular to the least principal stress.
Fracture Formation Pressure
Formation strength response
 Fracture Formation Pressure
The Leak-off Test – Limit Test - Formation Breakdown Test

The pressure at which formations will fracture when exposed to borehole

pressure is determined by conducting one of the following tests:

• Leak-off test

• Limit Test

• Formation Breakdown Test

Fracture Formation Pressure
The Leak-Off Test “LOT”
Fracture Formation Pressure
The Leak-Off Test “LOT”
Fracture Formation Pressure
The Leak-Off Test “LOT”
Fracture Formation Pressure
The Leak-Off Test “LOT”
 Fracture Formation Pressure
The Leak-Off Test “LOT”

The “Leak-off test” is used to

determine the pressure at which
the rock in the open hole section
of the well just starts to break
down (or “leak off”). In this type
of test the operation is
terminated when the pressure
no longer continues to increase
linearly as the mud is pumped
into the well.
 Fracture Formation Pressure
The Limit Test = Formation Integrity Test “FIT”

The “Limit Test” is used to

determine whether the rock in the
open hole section of the well will
withstand a specific,
predetermined pressure. This
pressure represents the maximum
pressure that the formation will be
exposed to while drilling the next
wellbore section.
 Fracture Formation Pressure
The Formation Breakdown Test

The “Formation Breakdown

Test” is used to determine the
pressure at which the rock in the
open hole section of the well
completely breaks down.
Extended Formation Strength Curve