Managed Pressure Drilling

As the most experienced provider of managed pressure drilling (MPD), Weatherford optimizes drilling and enhances well control while reducing hazards and decreasing nonproductive time (NPT). Through well planning, drilling engineering and the industry’s largest selection of proven MPD technologies, we will help you achieve …More Productive Drilling.

Our latest addition, the Secure Drilling* system, makes us the ONLY provider that can offer a complete suite—all the products and services you require for MPD. With Weatherford, you also get:

• more experience than anyone in the industry—in every region and every environment
• robust R&D and engineering resources
• some of the most advanced technologies available, including more than 40 years of rotating control device (RCD) design and manufacturing experience.

To learn more about the Secure Drilling system and how MPD can maximize your recovery and minimize your downtime, view our webcast: www.pennenergy.com/index/webcast.html.

* Secure Drilling is a joint venture between Weatherford International Ltd. and Impact Solutions Group Ltd.

Addressing Drilling Hazards

In difficult drilling environments, narrow pore-pressure and facture-gradient windows and other extremes make wellbore construction a challenge. Drilling hazards such as wellbore instability, lost-circulation zones, overpressurized formations and shallow flows can threaten the economics and operational viability of the well. MPD is a highly successful means of mitigation for many of these problems.

With MPD the challenges are typically related to maintaining the equivalent mud weight (EMW) within the drilling window between formation pore pressure and the fracture pressure of the section being drilled. This balancing act frequently involves narrow or relatively unknown downhole-pressure environments where kick-loss scenarios, fluid losses, well-control events and hole-stability problems present challenges in drilling the wells.

MPD addresses these hazards with a closed-loop, pressure-controlled circulation system. The technique enables close control of the pressure in the wellbore so that EMW is maintained within the pore-pressure/fracture-gradient window.

Variations of MPD

Variations of MPD are typically referred to in the context of the drilling hazard each addresses. Each variation, or a combination of several, addresses most of the commonly experienced drilling-related challenges:

Constant bottomhole pressure (CBHP) is applicable to prospects that have narrow or relatively unknown drilling windows, slow rate of penetration (ROP), ballooning/breathing and well-control risks.

Pressurized mud-cap drilling (PMCD) is applicable to deal with severe loss circulation and drilling in sour formations.

Dual gradient (DG) is applicable where it is necessary to remove some of the hydrostatic head pressure caused by a tall column of heavy mud in cuttings, typically to avoid gross overbalance conditions.

Returns flow control (HSE) is applicable when one wishes to close the mud-returns system under the rig floor for health, safety or environmental reasons, or as a complement to a “zero-discharge” emphasis.

For more information on our MPD-related products and services, including real results that demonstrate some of our global MPD successes, see the information in the right-hand column of this page.