Application prospect of MPD technology in shale gas drilling

As the exploration and development of domestic shale gas continue, the complex incidents we encountered during drilling are also increasingly prominent. For the shale formations which is leaky and have complex lithology in South China, MPD is necessary to learn to drill through the complicated shale interval in a fast, safe and efficient manner and to break these common technical challenges of drilling. Currently, southern Yangtze region mainly develops two sets of shale formations, Silurian Longmaxi and Cambrian Niutitang. However, there are less pure shale section, complicated lithology and serious fragmentation. According to the data of shale gas drilling, the limy, silty and siliceous shale is often met during drilling, frequently accompanied with overflow and lost circulation. For the target interval with thickly developed shale bed, the density window of drilling fluid is small and the well wall is extremely unstable. According to the lithologic development of shale bed, technical characteristics of MPD, lab analysis, current MPD supporting equipment and other relevant factors, the MPD in bottom hole constant pressure method can be used to drill through the large and complicated shale interval.