Maintaining the pH of drilling fluid with suitable additives is one of the important operation for efficient drilling operations.  However, commercial hydroxides are mostly used to control the pH of the drilling fluid. This paper evaluates locally sourced pH additives of burnt plantain heads (BPH), burnt ripe burnt ripe plantain peels (BRPP), and burnt banana plantain peels (BBPP) in comparison with conventional potassium hydroxide (KOH) and sodium hydroxide (NaOH) as suitable agents to control pH of drilling fluid. The drilling fluid as prepared with bentonite and local clay in different concentrations of KOH, NaOH, BPH, BRPP and BBRPP including Traona. The result of the study showed that pH of the drilling improved with respective use of conventional KOH, NaOH, BPH, BRPP and BBRPP as additives. In addition, KOH showed the maximum percentage of degree (%) of improvement on the drilling fluid with 38.46-45.45% compared with 27.2-40% for NaOH. On the other hand, BRPP achieved 27.2-41.2%, followed with 20-33% and 20-29.4% for BPH and BBPP respectively. Thus, the locally sourced additives could be used to enhance the pH and properties of drilling fluid.

Due to the daily increasing demand for crude oil fuel for its various capacities of energy production and utilizations, a twin respond of exploration for more hydrocarbon reserves and drilling activities was accompanied. As a result, rate and cost of importing drilling clay (Wyoming Bentonite), a major raw material in drilling mud becomes so high that hundreds of millions of dollar is incurred on company budget (Arinkoola, et al., 2020). Thus, the Federal Government of the federal republic of Nigeria, on sensing the benefits of local content development, then clamour for its use as drilling mud. This therefore becomes the bed-rock which this paper is belt on to investigate local clay for some its properties, like viscosity-gel strength. This paper also reviews the formulation of an equivalent one barrel of a laboratory drilling mud using Irhodo bentonite. This paper report two methods and devices used to determine viscosities; the marsh funnel viscosity method using Marsh Funnel and Fann Viscosity-Gel method using the Rheometer. The result of the experiment for the determination of viscosity using marsh funnel apparatus, for both local and bentonite drilling mud, and show 27.12 and 37.17sec/qt (seconds per quart). And when additives, CMC and guar-gum were added, 27.23sec/qt, 29.47sec/qt and 23.19sec/qt and 29.47sec/qt respectively obtained.