Saudi Aramco operates a large offshore oilfield development that has driven achievements in multilateral and extended-reach directional wells. One challenge the operator faces is to maintain proper hole cleaning in extended 8½-in. tangent sections at 85–87° inclinations, which are drilled in excess of 10,000 ft. In an effort to drill efficiently, a new technology to increase cuttings removal was trial tested on Well A1 from an onshore location of the field.
Introduction
Historically, drilling very long tangent sections required the use of several tandem sweep pills, wiper trips, and reaming and back reaming to maintain hole quality and remove cuttings from the wellbore efficiently.
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