One of the biggest handicaps of the Geothermal Drilling industry is the poor performance on ROP and the lack of process lacked proper data collection while drilling, data integration, and analysis of such data, when compared with the Oil and Gas Industries. The lack of this essential engineering, well planning, and construction tool seemingly adds a significant amount of time to the 12-day additional non-productive time (NPT) at average per well while drilling geothermal wells versus oil and gas wells, thus leading to higher well cost. Geothermal Resource Group (GRG) has recently been involved in the planning and drilling of a well for the FORGE Utah EGS and was able to successfully implement the use of MSETotal approach with PDC bits. Drilling was carried out in a vertical well to 9,145’ in 28 days, achieving similar ROP as those in oil and gas. Rate of penetration during drilling was extremely high when compared to the previous wells drilled in the same area. Advantages on PDC bit and proper use of MSE allowed for an improvement of more than 60% compared to previous wells in the area. Drilled footage with PDC achieved drilling than 1,000’ in a single bit run in extremely hard and abrasive formation. This paper presents the collection, evaluation, and the post-mortem comparison of the MSETotal to the drilling history, parameters, and changes in general lithological structures of this well.

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