Evaluation of Automated Drilling Technologies Developed for Petroleum Drilling and Their Potential when Drilling Geothermal Wells

The recent years, the petroleum industry has experienced increased drilling costs. One of the major challenges has been related to the narrow well bore pressure profile gap between the formation collapse pressure profile and the formation fracture pressure profile. Standard operational procedures, such as pipe connections and drill string tripping lead to pressure fluctuations. These pressure fluctuations may lead to drilling problems such as well bore collapse. The petroleum industry are currently developing and testing new technology, such as the Managed Pressure Drilling technologies, where new equipment and automated procedures are utilized to reduce the drilling costs. This paper presents an evaluation of the various automated drilling technologies now being utilized to reduce both the drilling time and the drilling costs. The focus has been to evaluate the potential of these automated technologies when used for drilling geothermal wells. Different well bore geometries have been evaluated; shallow wells, medium deep wells, deep wells, and ultradeep wells. The results indicate that the geothermal drilling industry has a large potential in reducing the drilling costs when utilizing automated drilling technology, especially when drilling deep wells.