Practical Rock Mechanics for Drilling and Completions

The next public version of this popular 2-day course will be held October 6-7, 2010 in Calgary, Alberta.  The course is offered through the Society of Petroleum Engineers at their training facility in downtown Calgary located at 425, 500 - 5th Ave SW.  For online registration with the Society of Petroleum Engineers click here.  For more details or questions on this course do not hesitate to contact us at training@weatherford.com.

We also offer this course to companies as an in-house version which can be customized to include an emphasis on certain special topics, including software examples. Contact us at 403.693.7530 if you would like to discuss a customized training course.

Who Should Attend:

Drilling, completions, exploitation and production engineers and technologists.

Here's What You Will Learn:

• How to assess when wellbore stability, sand production, or lost circulation will be a problem
• Basic techniques to obtain and apply earth stress and rock strength data
• The effects of pore pressures, mud properties and time on wellbore stability
• When drilling fluid chemistry really matters in shales
• How to assess the mud density or BHP window you can safely operate in
• Steps to mitigate the risk of severe problem time while drilling or completing
• How to avoid the problems encountered in offset wells
• To determine when the wellbore instability or sand production risks warrant a dedicated investigation

Here's What You Will Receive:

• A detailed course manual including all presented material
• An EXCEL program for basic Borehole Stress and Stability Calculations
• Up-to-date reference lists on all topics covered in the course
• In-situ stress trajectory maps
• Relevant case histories from North America and overseas
• A Wellbore Stability Planning Chart

Topics Covered in this Course:

• Earth Stresses
  • In-situ stress magnitudes and orientations
  • Predictive techniques for stress orientations and magnitudes
  • Borehole breakouts and how to use them
  • Stress testing (LOT, XLOT, minifracs, SRT)
  • How depletion affects stress magnitudes
• Rock Mechanical Properties
  • Shales, mudstones and coal
  • Poorly cemented sandstones
  • Naturally fractured rocks
  • Acoustic and dynamic rock elastic properties from logs and core
  • Effects of stress on permeability
  • WCSB, East Coast and foreign examples
  • Guidelines for rock mechanics testing
  • The six best ways to find rock strength
• Wellbore Stability
  • Modes of borehole failure
  • Stresses around boreholes
  • Lost circulation and induced fractures
  • Factors affecting hole stability
  • Mud-shale interaction, shale inhibition
  • Numerical stability modeling tools
  • Guidelines to avoid or reduce problems
  • Wellbore stability planning chart
  • Case histories from Canada and abroad
• Bit-Formation Interaction and ROP
  • Basic factors affecting ROP
  • Under and overbalanced pressures
  • Predicting rock strength profiles
  • Underbalanced drilling case history
• Sand Production and Control
  • Factors affecting sand production
  • Theories to predict sanding tendencies
  • Log analysis techniques
  • When do you need a liner?
  • Case histories from Canada and abroad
  • Sand control options - pros and cons
• Cold Heavy Oil Production with Sand  (CHOPS)
  • Canadian heavy oil experience
  • Wormholes versus near-wellbore yielding
  • Predicting the extent of geomechanical disturbance in CHOPS
  • Recent research and developments
  • Case histories and field experience
• STABView Software Cases including:
  • Lost circulation
  • 3D borehole stability
  • 2D elastoplastic yielding
  • 3D stability in dipping weak shales
  • 2D and 3D sand production predictions for perforated, openhole, and screen completions.

About the Principal Instructor:

Pat McLellan, M.Sc., P.Eng.  is an advisor with Weatherford Geomechanics Services, a petroleum consulting, research and software development firm based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.  We provide specialized geomechanics services and software to a world-wide clientele in wellbore stability, sand production and control, fracture stimulation, horizontal wells completions, formation damage, fractured reservoir characterization, caprock integrity, casing failures, in-situ monitoring, waste disposal, and geomechanical numerical modeling. Pat is the co-developer of STABView, a state-of-the-art commercial software package for wellbore stability and sand production risk assessment, and ROCKSBank, a rock mechanics and petrophysical properties database. He received a B.Sc.(Eng.) in Geological Engineering from Queen's University in 1979 and M.Sc. in Civil Engineering (Geotechnical) in 1983 from the University of Alberta. He is a member of the Petroleum Society of CIM, SPE, CWLS, CHOA, CADE, AAPG, CSPG and APEGGA. He has presented or published over 150 technical papers and given more than 80 short courses on rock-mechanics related topics in Canada and abroad.  He was an SPE Distinguished Lecturer on Borehole Stability in 2003 and a recipient of the Outstanding Service Award from the Petroleum Society of Canada in 2007.