Systematic Evaluation of Managed Pressure Drilling Variants: A Framework-Based Comparative Review for Operational Decision Support

MPD has evolved from a niche technique into a mainstream drilling capability over the last decade. It is now used in HPHT, deepwater, unconventional tight-gas, and sour-gas reservoirs. Despite this widespread adoption, the operational question of which MPD variant is best suited to a particular well profile has historically been addressed in the published literature on a case-by-case basis, without structured comparative synthesis. This paper addresses that gap through a systematic framework-based evaluation of fourteen MPD case-study publications sourced from the SPE and IADC literature between 2015 and 2025. A six-dimensional analytical framework, inductively developed from the recurring performance themes within the corpus, serves as the uniform evaluative instrument. The six dimensions encompass: well-control sensitivity and detection thresholds; narrow-margin pressure window navigation; non-productive time (NPT) and invisible lost-time reduction; rate-of-penetration (ROP) enhancement relative to conventional baselines; cementing and tripping operational reliability; and economic performance across deployment contexts. Synthesis findings confirm that MPD delivers well-control detection sensitivity approximately one to two orders of magnitude superior to conventional pit-volume methods; that variant selection materially affects operational outcomes; that NPT reduction is robustly demonstrated while ROP enhancement evidence remains comparatively sparse; and that economic viability is strongly contingent on multi-well campaign scale. A structured application-domain selection map, matching ten canonical operational situations to corpus-preferred MPD variants across three evidence-calibrated confidence tiers, is presented as the primary decision-support contribution of this review.

Managed Pressure Drilling; Well Control; Narrow-Margin Drilling; Comparative Framework; CBHP; PMCD; ABP; CML; Selection Map; Drilling Engineering

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15. © 2025 by the Authors. Published by IJRISS under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium is permitted, provided the original work is properly cited. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

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