The Role of LWD-MWD and Real Time
Data Transmission in Reducing the Drilling Cost in Deep
Water
Operations
By
Chris Leigh1, Tarek Labib2
(1) Shell, Cairo, Egypt (2) Halliburton, Egypt, Cairo, Egypt
The costly Drilling and
Formation
Evaluation in deep
water
represent a
challenge to the oil industry. This challenge requires collaborative efforts to
combine the available technology and obtain the optimum rock and geo-science
information. The new Logging While Drilling LWD technology fulfill some of the
requirements to relax these challenges.
Regarding Drilling, The Pressure While Drilling tool solved the problems of
Monitoring the hole cleaning, increased the effectiveness of the carrying
capacities of the drilling fluid in the open hole as will as in the riser
section and provided means of detecting of the shallow hazards (gases or
water
flow). The borehole stability, failure analysis, seismic-tie-in and pore
pressure can also be obtained using the acoustic LWD, the
density
LWD and the
Pressure while drilling.
Regarding
Formation
Evaluation, The combined Tripple combo LWD, NMR-LWD and
The BAT (Bi-Modal Acoustic Tool) provides the means to obtain the porosity,
water
mobility, fluid types and fracture identification.
The ability to provide all the above using Real Time Operation, RTO, represents a vital technology to speed up the decision making and reduce the rig time to wait on changes.
In this paper, Examples from the Mediterranean Sea Deep
Water
operations are
discussed and the future role of the LWD and Wireline
formation
evaluation with
real time operation is explained.
