IMPROVEMENT OF RHEOLOGICAL PROPERTIES OF DRILLING FLUID USING LOCALLY BASED MATERIALS

Water based drilling fluid is developed using bentonite, guar gum, polyanionic cellulose PAC and gum arabic. The rheological behavior and the filtration loss property of each drilling fluid developed is measured using API recommended standard procedures. The developed drilling fluid combinations are hot rolled using Hot Air Rolling Oven and Aging Cells for 16 hours to study temperature stability of the drilling fluid additives. We observed that the developed drilling fluid system has rheological properties where fluid loss control is required for minimum performance in oil well drilling. We also noticed that Guar gum shows the highest gel strength and the most stable rheological properties with very bad filtration loss property while gum arabic had unstable rheological properties with stable gel strength and good filtration loss property. These results show that water based drilling fluid can be used as a replacement for other additives as it is readily available incommercial quantity in the northern part of Nigeria.