More LCM is not the same as less lost circulation: Riteks Case Study Report
September 14, 2026
Oilfield Solutions
A Bakken operator was already running a high concentration of lost circulation material on deep surface jobs. Cement still reached surface only about half the time. What finally moved the number was not more material.
Riteks Oilfield Solutions · Cementing and lost circulation control
When cement does not come back to surface, the fix usually gets written on the job ticket as a volume problem. Add excess. Raise the LCM loading. Drop the ECD. Each of those moves is defensible on its own, and each one quietly adds cost to a job that was supposed to be routine.
The trouble is that a loss zone does not care how much material you pump at it. It cares whether the particles arriving at the fracture face can bridge the opening and hold. A material with the wrong particle size distribution does not become the right one at double the concentration. It just becomes a more expensive version of the same outcome.
Concentration compensates for a material that is not bridging. It does not correct it.
What a missed top of cement actually costs
A low top of cement is rarely a single line item. It sets off a chain of them:
Remedial or topout cementing to bring the column up to where it needed to be
Non-productive time while that remedial work is scheduled and executed
Cement excess carried on every subsequent job as insurance against the same result
LCM loadings held high across the program for the same reason
That last pair is the expensive part, because it persists. Once a crew has watched cement disappear into a formation, the excess and the loading tend to stay elevated on every pad that follows, whether or not that particular well needed it.
The Bakken result
On deep surface cement jobs in the Bakken, one operator was achieving cement to surface roughly 50% of the time while running a high concentration of a competitive LCM. After replacing it with 4 ppb of Legion-LCM in the lead cement, the success rate reached 100%. Those rates were measured over multiple pads, with little to no other changes to the cement job design other than the LCM itself. The full Bakken case study lays out the job conditions and the slot data behind that result.
The operator was experiencing severe lost circulation on deep surface cement jobs. Despite a high concentration of LCM, losses persisted, cement often failed to return to surface, and the result was low tops of cement requiring remedial or topout cementing. Lowering ECDs and increasing cement excess helped, but increased costs and still was not 100% successful.
Legion-LCM was selected to replace the incumbent material. It is a multi-modal lost circulation material capable of bridging and sealing, built as an all-in-one concept that improves operational efficiency and delivers greater success even at lower concentrations than other LCMs. At 4 ppb in the lead cement, the success rate of cement to surface went from 50% to 100% across multiple pads.
The second-order effects are where the economics live. A consistent 100% success rate allowed a lower cement excess on future jobs, and eliminated the NPT and the remedial and topout work tied to low tops of cement, drastically reducing operator costs.
Why multi-modal matters at the fracture face
Bridging is a geometry problem. A slot has a width, and the particle population arriving at it either spans that width and locks, or it passes through. Multi-modal means the material carries a distribution of sizes and types rather than a single mode, so larger particles catch across the opening while finer material fills in behind them and seals the plug against pressure.
That is why efficiency, not loading, is the number worth watching. Riteks slot testing puts concrete figures on it.
Concentration required to plug a slot
Select a loss severity to see the slot size it is associated with and the Legion-LCM concentration required to plug it.
Slot size association
3 mm
Legion concentration required to plug slot
12 lb/bbl
Concentrations shown with Riteks Sealing Spacer. A 3 mm slot is the severe end of the scale, and it is the one most programs are trying to defend against when they raise loadings across the board. These figures and the full reference table appear in the Legion-LCM case study.
Run your own numbers
The Bakken figures are one operator's. The arithmetic underneath them is yours. Enter your own program and see how many remedial and topout jobs sit inside your current success rate.
Cost of a missed top of cement
Nothing here is a Riteks estimate. These are your inputs, run through simple arithmetic.
20
Jobs a year that miss cement to surface
$1,500,000
Annual remedial and topout spend at your cost per job
50
Percentage points between your rate and 100%
This counts remedial and topout work only. It does not price the NPT around that work, the cement excess carried on every job as insurance, or the LCM loading held high across the program. Those were all reduced in the Bakken case as well.
The question to ask before raising the loading
If losses are persisting on a program that already runs a high LCM concentration, more of the same material is unlikely to be the variable that changes. The Bakken operator changed one thing, held the rest of the job design steady, and moved from half the pads to all of them.
That is the test worth running on your own program: not how much you are pumping, but whether what you are pumping is built to bridge the opening you are actually fighting.
Take a look at Legion-LCM
Specifications, recommended loadings, application detail, and documentation are on the product page. The Bakken case study has the job-level detail behind the numbers in this post. Or talk it through with the Riteks Oilfield Solutions team and request a sample for your next deep surface job.
