Paper presented at the IADC/SPE International Drilling Conference and Exhibition, Galveston, Texas, USA, March 2026. Paper Number: SPE-230752-MS. Despite significant progress made in drilling automation over the last decade, autonomous drilling of a hole section remains at an early stage. Autonomous drilling cannot happen without near 100% situational awareness (SA). Going by the adage “what…
Paper presented at the IADC/SPE International Drilling Conference and Exhibition, Galveston, Texas, USA, March 2026. Paper Number: SPE-230802-MS. While many different KPIs have been developed over the years for evaluating well construction performance, the definition and utilization of a wellbore quality KPI have remained challenging due to its subjective nature, data wrangling issues, and human…
Paper presented at the Kuwait Oil & Gas Show, Kuwait City, Kuwait, February 2026. Paper Number: SPE-230861-MS. Preventing stuck pipe incidents during well construction depends on accurately identifying their underlying causes. The conventional method for identifying the root cause of stuck pipe incidents relies on a worksheet completed manually by the rig crew, based on…
Paper presented at the Kuwait Oil & Gas Show, Kuwait City, Kuwait, February 2026. Paper Number: SPE-230871-MS. While conventional bit balling is readily identifiable, the deep formations of Egypt’s Western Desert present a unique and subtle variation: unconventional bit balling occurring at depths up to 15,000 ft in high-frequency interbedded lithologies. This paper details the…
Paper presented at the SPE Conference at Oman Petroleum and Energy Show, Muscat, Oman, May 2025.Paper Number: SPE-224876 Abnormal pressure loss during a drilling operation signals a failure in the fluid hydraulics circulating system. This could be due to a washout in the drill pipe (either in the body or connection), bottom hole assembly (BHA)…
Paper presented at the SPE/IADC International Drilling Conference and Exhibition, Stavanger, Norway, March 2025. Paper Number: SPE-223786 A major challenge in utilizing physics-based models such as torque and drag (T&D), hydraulics, cutting transport, drillstring dynamics, etc., in real-time, and with high reliability and confidence has been the lack of accuracy in drillstring data available as…
Paper presented at the Offshore Technology Conference, Houston, Texas, USA, May 2025. Paper Number: OTC-35818 In an effort to enhance safety and efficiency in offshore drilling operations, this research addresses critical gaps in the current understanding and application of leading indicators for Loss of Well Control (LOWC) events. Existing indicators often fall short in predicting LOWC…
Paper presented at the IADC/SPE International Drilling Conference and Exhibition, Galveston, Texas, USA, March 2024. In today’s well construction operations, a substantial volume of data is generated and stored across multiple databases. The primary objective being to use them as a guide for future well construction optimization. However, much of this data gets lost in…
Paper presented at the International Petroleum Technology Conference, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, February 2024. Paper Number: IPTC-24141-MS When stuck pipe incidents happen, they can drastically increase the cost of a well. Although much progress has been made in stuck pipe prevention it has not been eliminated. Therefore, there is an ever increasing need to be able to…
Drilling cost-efficient, safe, and deep wellbores is key to scaling geothermal energy. However, the elevated costs associated with high non-productive and invisible loss times (NPT/ILT) are taxing on the operators, acting as a severe bottleneck in utilizing geothermal energy. In deep geothermal wells, the leading contributors to NPT/ILT are the failure of downhole tools and/or…