The history of La Ceiba field began 10 years ago when six exploration wells were drilled to assess the potential of this field. The wells were drilled with several incidents of stuck pipe and the resulting necessary side-tracks to reach the final depth. Until last year no further attempt had been made to drill in this field. With little information available from the exploration wells concerning drilling practices, the drilling campaign began with the goal of improving the previous performance, making the drilling of the complete wells faster and safer than in the previous drilling. An engineering process was begun to find the best drilling solution for the field, starting with proven technologies such as positive displacement motors (PDM) and drill bits used in similar fields; however, this methods alone were not sufficient to meet the challenges of the field. New technologies were used for the different challenges and applications through coordinated work between the drilling engineering departments of the different parties involved in this field and using all the information available in the drill bit selection database, including logs and stability data for the tools selected to drill each phase of the wells. With evolution of the learning curve, drilling progressed from initial drilling involving 12 runs with time-consuming trips to surface to change either the drill bit or PDM, to drilling the same interval in 5 runs with the time on bottom increasing compare to previous experiences due to the introduction of tools more suitable to the environment requirements a rotary steerable systems (RSS) in combination with a specially designed drill bit. Problems commonly faced in the upper sections were, the trajectory was not strictly followed, were solved with the introduction of the RSS in this section; use of the tool saved 10 days of rig time and set a bench mark for the field and similar wells in western Venezuela. The development of this field shows that by solving the issues related to the well depth, temperature and constraints well design for these wells in western Venezuela, it will be possible to reach the oil reserves, at the same time decreasing the time spent in the drilling process.

This paper explores various case studies to evaluate how an innovative methodology for sending MWD surveys up hole, based on cessation of surface RPM rather than variations of mud flow rate, helps drilling operations become more cost effective, decreasing wellbore stability & HSE risks, reducing surveying time and optimizing connection procedures. Conventional surveys are taken by recycling the mud pumps. Mud flow is brought to below the MWD turn-on rate in order to switch off the tool and trigger the survey, and then the flow is increased to above the turn-on rate and the survey is sent to surface. Surveys based on RPM cessation use a different technique that allows the MWD tool to take the survey and to transmit it to the surface acquision system when it detects that the rotation has being stopped, allowing the mud flow to remain unchanged and removing the need to recycle the pumps. Various distinct applications were analyzed in terms of MWD surveying time, wellbore stability and stuck pipe risks to evaluate the impact of this new approach in drilling operations. The cases analyzed deal with the following aspects: reduction of stuck pipe events in projects with high risk wellbore stability issues, ECD and pressure management in MPD projects, anti-collision avoidance and overall reduction of rig time for projects taking MWD surveys before connection. It was concluded that more and more phases of a well construction have seen the benefit of this methodology as it has greatly contributed to the efficiency of drilling operations and in some of the cases allowing the fulfillment of the well objectives by the significant reduction of drilling risks, in comparison with the conventional way to take MWD surveys. This is a novel approach to take MWD surveys and send them up-hole; very little has been written in industry literature about how its application enhances the reduction of key drilling challenges such as reduction of stuck pipe events. This will allow operators and contractors to push the envelope even further, in scenarios where extra fluctuations in the mud flow are adding significant financial or HSE risks.