Unlike drilling in inert materials like rock or sand, many types of clay are reactive and once exposed to

water and drilling fluid by reaming, their properties can change considerably. If you have experienced
ground heaving, inadvertent flows (e.g., frac-out), reamer balling up and/or problems creating slurried
flow using bentonite, chances are you are drilling in clay.

Why is drilling clay so different than drilling sand or rock? The reason is the reactive nature of the
mineral. Imagine for a minute a small particle of clay of which there are many millions in a bore. If you
enlarge that particle to the size of your local yellow pages, then you can see what individual clay minerals
look like. They look like numerous individual sheets tightly bound together, but just like the yellow pages
they are not so tightly bound that they can not be separated. If you took those yellow pages and were to
leave them out in the rain, you would find that the book expanded significantly and no longer closes
properly. This is because water is absorbed between the sheets of paper. This same phenomenon occurs
in clay and is one of the peculiarities of drilling in clay.

The cuttings created by the reamer are exposed to both water in your drilling fluid, and groundwater. If
you can liken the swelling of a wet yellow pages to the swelling of millions and millions of clay particles
in your bore, you can soon see how drilling in clay is significantly different than drilling in sand. Since
bentonite is nothing more than specially refined reactive clay itself, drilling in clay ground with bentonite
alone often can exacerbate the problem of thick sticky cuttings not flowing from the bore.

To minimise the swelling tendency of clay, a type of polymer called a PHPA or partially hydrolysed
polyacrylamide is used. Polymers like POLY-BORE™ dry borehole stabilising agent, QUIK MUD® liquid
polymer emulsion, EZ-MUD® liquid polymer emulsion, and EZ-MUD GOLD dry beaded polymer possess a
couple of interesting properties that bentonite does not have that make them very effective at inhibiting
the swelling of clay minerals. Firstly, as the PHPA hydrates in the tank, the molecule becomes enveloped
in a film of water, which creates electrostatic repulsion like two like ends of a magnet pushing each other
apart. As the polymer continues to hydrate, it also uncoils and lengthens. This combination of repulsion
and uncoiling creates the viscosity that commonly is observed in the tank. Secondly, and more
importantly, the hydrated polymer strand has a series of charged functional groups along its length that
can interact with the clay particles in the bore. The edges of a clay cutting (i.e. the edges of the sheets in
the yellow pages) are charged, so when the cutting is exposed to a drilling fluid containing a PHPA, the
charges on the polymer attract to the clay’s surface and bind to the clay. Once the PHPA is bound to the
clay particle, ground water or drilling fluid can no longer absorb into the clay. Simply stated, once the
interaction between the cuttings and water is reduced, the more likely the yellow pages would not swell
much.
The PHPA polymers mentioned all are designed to prevent clay/shale swelling, so why is there more than
one kind? The difference between them is the size of the molecule and the concentration of active
ingredient, which makes them useful for different applications and drilling operations. For example, to
build a polymer fluid of a desired viscosity (e.g. 40 sec/qt), it would take less of a larger molecule (e.g.
POLY-BORE dry borehole stabilizing polymer) than it would with a smaller molecule (EZ-MUD liquid
polymer emulsion). Moreover, a larger molecule like POLY-BORE dry borehole stabilising polymer
contains 100 per cent active ingredient, while most liquid polymers do not (<40 per cent).

Which PHPA should be used depends on three things: 1) the type of mixing system available, 2) whether
bentonite is to be used as the base fluid, 3) and