ABSTRACT

Oil and/or gas well drilling processes are high-cost operations; however, these costs can be reduced by optimising drilling operations. Particularly, it is vital to optimise the drilling rate of penetration during oil well drilling operations. Predicting the rate of penetration (ROP) plays a key role in the success of the drilling operation. It is not an easy task to predict the ROP with high accuracy as it depends on several factors such as; drilling parameters, drilling fluid properties, and drilled formation characteristics. The objective of this paper is to carry out sensitivity analysis on the controllable parameters such as weight-on-bit (WOB), bit rotary speed (rpm), and hydraulics required to attain the optimum ROP throughout the drilling program and develop a new model to predict the drilling rate of penetration based on the data available.

The data on which the network was trained was collected from one drilled oil well, and 197397 data points were used to develop the new model. The results showed that the resulting regression analysis model offers high accuracy for predicting the drilling rate of penetration. The statistical analysis showed that the developed model predicted the rate of penetration very high accuracy (R value of 0.848570199, and a R squared value of 0.720071). The new model can also be used to determine the optimum drilling parameters to obtain a desired rate of penetration.

The obtained results confirmed that a second-order polynomial equation with the Depth, metres, Temperature, ^oC, Rotary speed, rpm, Pump Pressure, KPa, Flow out, litres/min, Well Head Pressure, KPa, and the Weight on Bit, kg parameters could be used to predict the ROP for complex lithologies, high pressure high temperature wells with high accuracy.

The new ROP equation can be used without the need for the Excel Data Analysis Tool Pack or any other special software.