Oil and water based mud: characteristic for each section drilled

Abstract

In petroleum drilling operations, crossing shale formations poses problems whose solution is strongly related to the understanding of shale -drilling fluid interactions. Due to the lack of performances of water-based fluids (WBM) faced with shale problems, emulsified oil based fluids (OBM) afforded significant improvements. However, the main technical difficulty lies in the treatment of the pollution generated by these emulsions.