US Patent Issued to Opla Energy on May 20 for "Monobore drilling methods with managed pressure drilling" (Canadian Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,305,456, issued on May 20, was assigned to Opla Energy Ltd. (Calgary, Canada).

"Monobore drilling methods with managed pressure drilling" was invented by Elvin Mammadov (Calgary, Canada), Shawn Cody (Calgary, Canada) and Ahmad Alizadeh (Calgary, Canada).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method for drilling a wellbore comprises using drilling mud having a mud weight less than the formation pore pressure while drilling the horizontal section, to release some formation gas to mix with the drilling mud. As the mixture flows up the wellbore annulus, the resulting pressure in the vertical section is within the mud weight window (MWW) of the weak...