An Energy Based Comparison of Alternative Drilling Methods

Abstract During the last decades, non-conventional solutions for more economical well bore drilling have been investigated. Big research efforts and budgets have been spent on alternative drilling methods; such as laser drilling or jet assisted drilling. Simplified assumptions predicted a big future for such technologies. However, to get a better and more realistic picture of the feasibility of such unconventional ways to drill rock, the ability to apply them in field scale applications needs to be questioned. In this paper a holistic energy approach to evaluate drilling alternatives is proposed. To evaluate the energy balance of the drilling system the amount of energy generated, e.g by the rig at surface, needs to be put in comparison with all system energy consumption to lead to an effective energy available to destroy rock at the bottom of the hole. To test this concept a small scale laboratory setup is used to compare different drilling methods under similar conditions. This paper presents a systematic approach using an energy concept to compare alternative drilling methods on a laboratory scale. In this first approach laser assisted spallation and conventional drilling were compared. As a by-product, also the optimum mode for spallation drilling, continuous versus pulse wave, will be presented.