Case Study: Middle East Operating Company achieves first high-temperature ERD gas well with SLB integrated drilling and execution

Integrated Planning and Execution Help Deliver Middle East Operator’s First High-Temperature ERD Gas Well

SLB helped Middle East Operating Company drill its first high-temperature extended-reach gas well in a challenging onshore environment next to an urban area. The operator needed to manage hole-cleaning, weight-on-bit transfer, wellbore instability, water flow, abrasive and overpressured formations, and extreme temperatures reaching 315°F while maintaining safe operations.

SLB delivered integrated planning and execution, using prejob risk assessment, geomechanics, torque and drag and hydraulics modeling, and a tailored drilling system that combined drillbits, directional drilling, LWD, drilling fluids, surface logging, and hole-cleaning services. The company also deployed technologies including CLEAR, PreVue, FLAG, FLAIR, OptiWell, IDEAS, i-DRILL, VIRTUAL HYDRAULICS, PowerDrive RSS, and StingBlade bits. As a result, SLB drilled the well to plan with no HSE incidents, hit planned subsurface targets, and set multiple regional records for deepest challenging logging conditions, wet latch runs, and highest drilling and logging temperature in a Middle East ERD well.