Part 3 of Blick's clay series. How to examine cuttings samples in real time, adjust your fluid mix, and use rheology testing to maintain a healthy drilling fluid programme on site.
The Challenge
Clay conditions change within a single drill shot — from manageable to highly reactive, from clean cutting to mud balling. Drillers without a systematic approach to cuttings analysis end up guessing at product additions, spending more product than needed and still not solving the problem.
The Approach
Start with water treatment: Soda Ash raises pH, removes calcium, and decreases hardness — preparing the makeup water before any product is added. Then deploy the five-product system: Swell Stop (Liquid) prevents swelling, Clay Dissolve breaks down clay particles, Clay Control inhibits water contact with clay platelets, Carry Flow improves cutting removal, Torque Down reduces adhesion. Examine cuttings samples immediately as they come up. Adjust product dosages in real time based on what you see.
The Outcome
Real-time cuttings analysis and fluid adjustment eliminates reactive guesswork. Adding just 1 to 2 litres per cubic metre of products like Clay Control produces measurable results — concentrated formulations mean small adjustments have significant impact.
The Full Story
Following on from our previous blogs, we will be looking at clay samples out of the ground, and how to design a system to combat clays while optimising your drilling operations.
How to combat clays
1. Make up water
First, we need to make sure our makeup water is treated. At Blick, we prefer to use Soda Ash to treat makeup water, which allows the pH to rise, cleans the water of calcium, and reduces hardness.
2. What products to use
- A great mix uses a proven system in clays with the ability to add and remove products while analysing soil samples.
- We can utilise Swell Stop (Liquid), Clay Dissolve, Clay Control, Carry Flow and Torque Down.
- This is a great chemical mix of drilling fluids that perform a function to combat clays, allowing you to drill without mud balls, sticky clays on tooling, or clay blockages from not breaking the clays down.
3. Real-time analysis
- A great way to ensure the mix works for your ground conditions is to examine the samples/cuttings in real-time.
- Based on looking at the samples out of the ground, we can see how the fluid balance is working downhole. This allows us to add, or even in some instances remove, the amount of drilling fluid in the mix. If we need to remove more cuttings, we can increase the Carry Flow to clean the hole.
- Rheology is another great test to run on your fluid to make sure we have a good baseline healthy drilling fluid.
Why Blick
Blick has been supplying the drilling industry in Australasia for 50 years. It combines local expertise with global resources, delivering fast, agile, and effective solutions. While larger competitors may have more staff, our focus and problem-solving capabilities enable us to respond faster and adapt better.
What makes Blick Fluids products different is that they are highly concentrated. Simply adding 1-2L per m3 of Clay Control or Clay Dissolve can greatly impact your overall drilling performance.
If you would like to know more or put us to the test, let us design a fluid system to meet your specific requirements.