This course is designed to deliver high angle, horizontal and extended reach drilling training to engineering and operations personnel across the entire team. It combines the fundamental factors associated with high angle drilling success along with advanced engineering topics, real-world examples and detailed operational deep dives ensuring everyone in the team understands the risks and opportunities, and how their role contributes to overall project success.

This course has a more practical focus then the engineering and operations training, as well as a shorter duration. Bringing key members of the execution team together before spud to understand where the risks are, and the reasons for doing things in a certain way is a sure-fire way to improve operational execution. We still train on the fundamental technical aspects of high angle, horizontal and extended reach drilling but with more focus on the practical aspects such as making connections, tripping, back-reaming and proactive hole condition monitoring.

This course is based on real-life events and lessons learned from actual stuck pipe investigations Merlin has completed on behalf of operators over the last 15 years. The course provides your team with the knowledge to understand root causes, risk factors and risk reduction options, leading to a lower chance of an event and better outcomes if you do get stuck.

Merlin has developed a comprehensive geomechanics course, developed specifically for drillers. Understanding wellbore stability limits in any high angle hole section is critical for successful execution. We start at the beginning; from the causes of geomechanical stresses and how models and built and interpreted, through to what a wellbore stability problem might look like depending on the stress regime and more importantly, how you can recognise and avoid problems occurring in the first place. As well as the science, we focus on the practical application of drilling processes and technology to mitigate, manage and control these risks.