ABSTRACT
Drilling for oil and natural gas is a multi-billion dollar industry that will continue to grow with every passing day. The reasons for its growth are endless but it mostly comes down to the profitability that is associated with this operation (Allred et al., 2015). In simplest terms, drilling is a process whereby a hole (mostly cylindrical) is made in earth either through soil or rock formations (in most cases both) to create a well for the extraction of oil and natural gas. There are different types of wells that serve various functions. They include exploration wells (drilled for exploration purposes based on recommendations from geologists/scientists), appraisal wells (drilled to assess the properties of an already known oil reserve), development wells (drilled in fields of proven economic and recoverable oil/gas reserves), relief wells (drilled to mitigate blowout from a reservoir), and injection wells (drilled to inject steam or carbon dioxide to maintain the pressure of the oil). There is a reason for these different types as the profits from oil and gas reserves are enormous (Misstear et al., 2017). As an example, it has been estimated that only 1% additional recovery rate from the North Sea (Norwegian sector) alone would generate an additional €36.6 billion (Nguyen et al., 2016). 40According to the US Energy Information Administration, in 2017, more than 27 million barrels of oil were produced offshore across 50 countries. The world’s largest offshore oil-producing countries are Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Mexico, Norway, and the United States (More, 2020). The long-term outlook for the oil industry, however, may be more promising. For example, most of the global top oil producing nations will have distinct higher production maxima in 2020 than in 2011. It is projected that global oil demand will increase until at least 2035. Daily global oil consumption is expected to grow from 89 million barrels in 2012 up to 109 million barrels in 2035. Transportation and industry will continue to be the sectors with the highest demand for oil (Sönnichsen, 2020). However, extraction of oil is not a simple task as a key issue is water and gas breakthrough, where the unwanted phase of water or gas displaces the required phase of oil. One of the most critical being the premature closure of production capacity caused by unwanted breakthroughs of water or gas in wells. There is a strong and growing need to maximize recovery from new and existing oil fields, and designing drill bits that can help in achieving this goal is getting more and more attention (Augustine et al., 2017; Smalley et al., 2018).
