Abstract
Drilled cuttings transportation from the bottom hole to the surface to maintain efficient hole cleaning is a challenging issue while drilling vertical, deviated, high angle, and extended reach wells. This is attributed to the huge number of the parameters affecting the ability of the drilling fluid to leave the drilled solids. Drilling fluid rheology, density, and flowrate, hole size, drill pipe size, hole inclination, and rate of penetration are all confirmed experimentally to affect the effectiveness of the drilling mud to lift the fluid and keep a clean hole. Several parameters were developed earlier to account for the hole cleaning conditions, most of these parameters lake to including many of the parameters influencing the hole cleaning conditions. In this study, a new hole cleaning parameter was developed, which is called hole cleaning factor (HCF). The HCF parameter was developed based on the cutting carrying index (CCI) parameter, and it considered the effect of the drilling fluid rheology, density, and flowrate, the hole size, drill pipe size, hole inclination, and rate of penetration to identify the hole cleaning condition. The HCF model was applied in an oil well from North Africa to predict the hole cleaning condition at different 135 points where the depth ranges from 33 to 12,854 ft. The outcomes of the HCF were well correlated with the real-field scenarios, where the crew members faced by erratic torque with differentiation in drilling parameters resulting in worst stuck pipe conditions at the same depths as predicted by the HCF parameter. The developed HCF model will help the drilling engineers to avoid many issues while drilling such as cutting accumulation and drill pipe sticking. The predictability of the HCF model was compared with commercially available software, and the results indicated a good match between the predictability of the HCF model and the commercial software.
