Impact of Drilling Equipment Quality Condition and Expertise Availability on Well Drilling Cost- a Case Study of Olkaria Geothermal Field.

Abstract

Geothermal drilling is an expensive activity whose cost have a direct bearing on the final cost of a geothermal project. It is desirable to have no downtime during drilling. Such a well would take less time to drill and even hasten delivery of a geothermal project. It is therefore important to optimize the drilling time so as to reduce the cost of drilling the well. To achieve this, an analysis of the cause of non-productive time caused by equipment downtime (which forms the bulk of NPT recorded in Olkaria) incurred while drilling a well is necessary so as to identify areas of improvement. This paper highlights the causes of non-productive time occasioned by equipment downtime through drilling time analysis of nine wells drilled in the Olkaria field in Kenya with the view of improving on the causing factors and hence saving on costs.