Drilling in the Brushy Canyon
The Brushy Canyon is a well-known troublesome formation in Southeastern New Mexico that consists mainly of sandstone but contains some limestone lenses and thin beds of shale and chert. The inconsistency of drilling in this “ratty” formation leads to many drilling problems. The formation top is typically located at 7,000-8,000 ft. TVD and has a thickness of about 1,000 ft.
While drilling through the Brushy Canyon, operators typically set their goal to two-bit the entire interval. The first bit will drill from ~1,000 ft to the top of the Brushy Canyon (7,000-8,000 ft), and the second bit will be taken down to 11,000-12,000 ft, depending on target formation.
Recently, an operator wanted to achieve drilling from drillout to below the Brushy Canyon in one run without sacrificing ROP. The selected bit for this operation was Ulterra’s XP because of its known durability and previous success for this operator.
Ulterra’s XP
Drilling with Ulterra’s 9.875” XP616, this operator was able to drill 10,300 ft. with an average ROP of 89 ft/hr to accomplish a record 9.875” vertical run. The XP616 not only drilled all the way to the Brushy Canyon but came out at a depth of 11,485 ft. – well below the Brushy Canyon. While this run was able to achieve a record depth, another XP616 was deployed to drill an additional 410 ft. to reach TD. Including this run, Ulterra holds 9 of 10 New Mexico footage records in this interval.
