An Overview of the Common Water-Based Formulations Used for Drilling Onshore Gas Wells in the Middle East

The proper selection of drilling fluids formulations and its treatment has always been a challenge and requires a great effort to ensure optimum drilling performance. The objective of this paper is to assist the mud engineer in selecting the water-based drilling fluid formulations that are best suited for a certain application. To achieve this target, the field practices were combined with the literature to study the most practiced water-based drilling fluid recipes used for onshore gas applications in the Middle East (i.e., spud mud, high-bentonite spud mud, salt/polymer mud, and high-overbalanced mud). From both field practices and deep literature review, it is recommended that both spud mud and high-bentonite spud mud be prepared and pre-hydrated for 4–6 h before a well spud. Also, it is important to add detergents with high-viscosity sweeps to avoid the bit balling and maintain the gel strength. While for salt/polymer mud, the regular addition of sodium sulfite is necessary for polymers stabilization, and the efficient solids control equipment performance is essential. To avoid the solids sagging issues associated with drilling high-pressure high-temperature deep gas reservoirs, it is recommended to either uses sag resistance materials, micronized weighting materials, or a combination of different weighting materials. The high-overbalanced mud is the most effective and efficient type when drilling a combination of natural fractured depleted gas reservoirs with high-pressure gas reservoirs.