Analysis of water and geothermal-well shallow drilling data via drilling software allows for rock drillability assessment and drill bit performance

Summarization: Drilling maybe the most expensive part of an exploration campaign for production of miner- als, geothermal fluids, water and hydrocarbons. Significant advances have been made on devel- oping drilling bits and equipment as well as drilling techniques, with hydrocarbon exploita- tion industry leading the way but no such ad- vances have been made on modeling rock-bit interaction. Some models have appeared for oil industry but with limited success, while no such models have been required for surface drilling, such as water or shallow geothermal well drill- ing, because drilling conditions are not so diffi- cult. Water-well depths, however, have been in- creasing in recent years, and a closer look into drilling data is needed for choosing better drill bits and implementing optimum drilling condi- tions. An oil-well drilling simulator has thus been tested and used to simulate drilling data from two shallow water wells from USA and a geothermal well in Greece. The data is analyzed with respect to the given lithology, drill bit and bit wear and drilling conditions (weight, torque, fluid flow. The results show that if we have ac- cess to drilling data from the region, such a tool could be very useful for planning new wells, for choosing the right drill bit and right drilling conditions, thus reducing costs in an exploration campaignΠαρουσιάστηκε στο: 3rd International AMIREG Conferenc