Optimizing the rheological properties of water-based drilling fluid using clays and nanoparticles for drilling horizontal and multi-lateral wells

Drilling fluid constitutes an important part of the drilling operations. Gel strength property of drilling fluids plays a key role in drilling multilateral and long horizontal reservoir sections. Losing the gel strength will accumulate drilled cuttings and as a result, sticking of the drill string. Solving this issue takes a long time and increase the total cost of the drilling operations. The objectives of this paper are to (1) determine the rheological properties of calcium carbonate water-based drilling fluid over a wide range of temperature, (2) assess the effect of adding nanoclay, bentonite, and nanosilica on the gel strength problem associated with the current field formulation of calcium carbonate water-based drilling fluids, and (3) optimize the concentration of bentonite, nanosilica, and nanoclay in the drilling fluid. The concentration of bentonite, nanoclay, and nanosilica was varied from 1 wt% to 10 wt%. Rheological properties results confirmed that the gel strength of the calcium carbonate water-based drilling fluid reached zero lb/100ft² by increasing the temperature to 200 °F (93.33 °C). This issue was solved by adding different concentrations of bentonite, nanoclay, and nanosilica. At low bentonite concentrations (3.33 wt%), the gel strength still reduced with time. At high bentonite concentrations (10 wt%), the gel strength increased with time. The optimum concentration of bentonite was 6.66 wt%, which yielded a flat rheology profile of the gel strength. These results confirmed that the rheological properties of the water-based drilling fluid were optimized by using bentonite. Similarly, 7.5 wt% nanosilica showed the optimum performance. Nanoclay was not effective in improving the rheological properties of the calcium carbonate drilling fluid.