Following on from Clay and Luke’s previous blogs, Omer will look at clay samples out of the ground, and how to design a system to combat clays while optimising your drilling operations.

Drilling in clay formations can be challenging. Tooling choice and methodology are important contributors to the successful drilling of clays. Equally important and our focus here is looking into some of the drilling fluid chemicals that can help with this formation type.

Bentonite is a very reactive clay that shrinks or swells markedly in response to the removal or addition of water.

Bentonite consists mainly of smectite minerals (swelling or expandable clay), commonly formed by the decomposition of volcanic ash or sometimes from other igneous or sedimentary rocks.