Managed Pressure Drilling for Improved Well Control: A Cross-Case Comparative Study (2015–2025)

Year : 2026 | Volume : 16 | Issue : 02 | Page : 07 12
    By

    Jagroop Singh Yadav,

  • Harsh Vardhan,

  1. Research Scholar, Department of Mathematics, Shri Venkateshwara University, Gajraula, Uttar Pradesh, India
  2. Professor, Department of Mathematics, Shri Venkateshwara University, Gajraula, Uttar Pradesh, India

Abstract

Managed Pressure Drilling (MPD) has matured over the past decade from a specialist technique applied to challenging wells into a mainstream drilling capability spanning ultra-HPHT exploration, deepwater development, unconventional tight-gas multi-well campaigns, and naturally fractured sour-gas reservoirs. Despite this maturation, the operational question of which MPD variant should be applied to a given well has been addressed in the literature case-by-case rather than through structured comparative synthesis. This paper presents the first cross-case comparative analysis of fourteen MPD case-study publications drawn from the SPE and IADC literature of 2015–2025. A six-dimensional analytical framework — covering well-control sensitivity, narrow-margin navigation, non-productive-time reduction, rate-of-penetration enhancement, cementing/tripping reliability, and economic performance — is developed inductively from the recurring performance themes in the literature and applied uniformly across the corpus. The principal findings are that MPD achieves qualitatively superior detection sensitivity (approximately one to two orders of magnitude better than conventional pit-volume kick detection); that variant choice is consequential and the corpus supports defensible variant-to-situation matching across three confidence tiers; that NPT reduction is well demonstrated while ROP enhancement evidence remains asymmetrically thinner; and that economic performance depends critically on the multi-well-campaign versus single-well distinction. An application-domain selection map matching ten canonical operational situations to corpus-preferred MPD variants is presented as the principal decision-support output.

Keywords: Managed pressure drilling; well control; narrow-margin navigation; comparative case analysis; CBHP; PMCD; ABP; CML; selection map; drilling engineering.

[This article belongs to Journal of Petroleum Engineering & Technology ]

How to cite this article:
Jagroop Singh Yadav, Harsh Vardhan. Managed Pressure Drilling for Improved Well Control: A Cross-Case Comparative Study (2015–2025). Journal of Petroleum Engineering & Technology. 2026; 16(02):07-12.
How to cite this URL:
Jagroop Singh Yadav, Harsh Vardhan. Managed Pressure Drilling for Improved Well Control: A Cross-Case Comparative Study (2015–2025). Journal of Petroleum Engineering & Technology. 2026; 16(02):07-12. Available from: https://journals.stmjournals.com/jopet/article=2026/view=250271


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Regular Issue Subscription Review Article
Volume 16
Issue 02
Received 17/05/2026
Accepted 20/05/2026
Published 23/06/2026
Publication Time 37 Days
37

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