Feasibility of Underbalance Drilling in Tight Gas Reservoirs – A New Approach

Deep, tight reservoirs face significant appraisal and development challenges. In particular, it can be difficult proving the presence and mobility of sufficient quantities of gas to make the reservoir economically viable. At the same time, drilling costs are extremely high. In this context, underbalanced drilling (UBD) provides a number of benefits: first, it enables the operator to proof (i.e., provide physical evidence for) the presence of producible quantities of gas (so-called “testing while drilling”) while the well is being drilled. Underbalanced drilling also can minimize formation damage and maximize the rate of penetration. This, combined with reduced use of expensive mud formulations, can result in significant savings of drilling and completion costs relative to conventional drilling. However, not all reservoirs are suitable for UBD as there is much greater risk of mechanical wellbore instabilities relative to wells drilled overbalanced. We present a new, realistic approach that enables to increase the accuracy of predictions and at the same time takes scale as well as time depenent effects into consideration. The results of this type of analysis can provide an invaluable help for tight gas reservoir exploration and production.