Casing While Drilling Application: Changing Mitigation to a Performance

Abstract

Well construction process through the unstable formations prone to total losses, pack-off and water influx is challenging. The manuscript describes the casing while drilling (CwD) combined with stage-cementing tool as introduced solution, when the challenge was to ensure that torque limit is not reached while drilling and estimate the effect of CwD on curing total losses and bring the casing while drilling performance to the level of conventional drilling. Introduction of CwD required extensive study of the potential torque while drilling as existing stage-cementing tools have low torque rating. Additionally, the casing fatigue may be a factor affecting the operations what lead to an introduction of magnetic particle casing inspection. The CwD bit design was adopted to the geological conditions based on best performance of the PDC bit, and originally selected drilling parameters were further optimized based on the result of the first runs. As the drilling of the well required utilization of mud cap for well control purposes, the mud recipes were adjusted to optimize the drilling performance and minimize the cost implication. The proposed solutions allowed to eliminate the problem with wellbore instability and related stuck pipe events. Further the proper engineering of the drilling process allowed significantly increase the rate of penetration since the beginning of the implementation, when the drilling torque never reached the limit even at 7,000 ft depth. The manuscript describes in detail the approach to make a proper design of CwD process focusing on prevention of existing problems and aiming to convert mitigation tool to a performance tool. Additionally, in details described the studied effect of CwD on curing total losses in highly fractured environment.