Managed Pressure Drilling to Increase Rate of Penetration and Reduce Formation Damage

One of the advantages of managed pressure drilling (MPD) is an increase in drilling speed and a reduction of mud filtrate invasion as a result of decreasing pressure differential. Reduction of overbalanced pressure (OBP) leads to a decrease of confining pressure around the formation rock and consequently the rock is broken more easily under the bit action and therefore the rate of penetration (ROP) increases. It is also obvious that decreasing the overbalanced pressure results a reduction in mud filtrate invasion and formation damage. In the present article the effect of MPD on increasing rate of penetration and decreasing mud filtrate invasion is studied. Artificial neural networks (ANN) were implemented to develop a model for estimation of ROP by using operational inputs including overbalanced pressure. Using the ANN model, the effect of OBP was analyzed. The effect of OBP on mud filtrate invasion was studied by using developed models of the process and simple Darcy’s law. The results demonstrated that MPD leads to about 30% increase in rate of penetration and 50% decrease in mud filtrate invasion.