Weekly · Technical Field Insights · Nov 2026 · W16 · 7 min read

The end-of-well report: where it all comes together

Sixteen weeks ago we started with a single calculation. We end with the document that carries all of them: the end-of-well solids-control report. It is where the mass balance, the equipment settings, the mud trends and the waste numbers become one deliverable that proves what you did and improves the next well. This week: how to build a report that an operator keeps.

Written by Othman Soliman — Founder, SC DrillTech · 26+ years in solids control, drilling fluids & waste management. The closing issue of our first technical series.

The report is the product

Everything the solids-control engineer does across a well is invisible unless it is written down. The end-of-well report is where the work becomes an asset — a permanent, auditable record that proves performance to the operator, satisfies the compliance file, and becomes the baseline the next well is planned against. A well drilled without a report has to relearn its own lessons. A well with a good report hands them forward.

What goes in it

A complete end-of-well solids-control report pulls the whole series together, section by section:

Summary & KPIs — the headline numbers first: SRE, LGS held vs target, dilution and mud cost, haul-off reduction, mud-related NPT. The operator reads this page.
Solids balance per section — generated vs removed vs diluted, with removal efficiency (the mass-balance work).
Equipment performance — shaker screens and G-force, cyclone head and condition, centrifuge settings and mode, by section — what was run and how it performed.
Fluid trends — LGS, PV/YP/gels, ECD and any sag events over the well.
Waste summary — volumes generated, recovered, discharged, reinjected and hauled, with ROC and the compliance record.
Lessons & recommendations — what to change on the next well: equipment, screens, capacity, procedures.

Write it for two readers

An end-of-well report serves two audiences, so it should have two layers. The operator and office read the summary and the KPIs — they need cost, risk and time on one page. The next engineer reads the detail — the section-by-section settings, trends and lessons that let them plan capacity and screens before spudding. Lead with the summary for the first reader; support it with the full record for the second. A report that serves only one leaves value on the table.

Make it a standard, not a one-off

The same argument as the audit applies to the report: its value multiplies when the format is fixed. A standardised end-of-well report — same sections, same KPIs, same units, every well — makes wells comparable, reveals trends across a field or a rig, and turns a stack of individual reports into a dataset you can plan and benchmark against. This is exactly why a defined reporting standard, and the tools to produce it consistently, are worth more than any single well's document.

The takeaway — and thank you

The end-of-well report is where sixteen weeks of engineering becomes one durable asset: it proves performance, closes the compliance file, and plans the next well. Build it in two layers — KPIs for the operator, detail for the next engineer — and to a fixed standard so the value compounds across wells. That is the whole SC DrillTech method, start to finish: measure every stage, prove it with numbers, and write it down so the next well starts smarter than this one. Thank you for reading this first series — measured, not guessed, from the first calculation to the last report.

Educational field guidance based on standard end-of-well reporting practice. Report content and format depend on the operator and program — verify against your own contract and standards before finalising.

What happens next

This closes the first 16-week Weekly series. You'll keep getting the Monthly Industry Briefing without doing anything — that keeps running every month. We're still deciding the shape of the next Weekly season, and Monthly subscribers will hear about it first. If you subscribed for Weekly only and don't want a gap, add Monthly from your subscription settings.

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This brief is the field summary. For the full reference, see: