Interactive Drilling : the Up-To-Date Drilling Technology

Oil & Gas Science and Technology, Jul 2004

Drilling technologies have made much progress the last twenty years. In the past, many wells had to be drilled before and during the development of an oil field. The first wells were devoted to exploration and appraisal and the following ones to development of the oil field. Today, with horizontal drilling a common technique, wells with complex geometry can be drilled in a reservoir allowing the oil to be extracted from different places. Extended reach wells allow oil from remote locations to be reached. Furthermore, capitalizing on drilling is an efficient way to reduce the costs of appraisal, development and exploitation of an oil or gas field. Drilling is a unique opportunity to acquire data in order to take real time decisions leading to a global optimization of the drainage system. All the new technologies such as measurement while drilling, data acquisition, data transfer or high speed computing give the opportunity to provide the geologist, the reservoir engineer and the drilling engineer with more accurate information for taking better decisions. However new tools have to be designed to allow an optimized use of this information. Raw data must be transformed to high level of information so that decisions can be taken quickly with a low level of risk. However there is still the need to perform real-time economic evaluation of the well so that the decisions to drill one meter more can be also taken on economic simulations. In this revue, different techniques to generate high quality information from drilling data will be discussed. Some results issued from research projects managed by IFP and its partners will be addressed.Les technologies de forage ont fait beaucoup de progrès durant ces vingt dernières années. Dans le passé, le développement d'un champ nécessitait le forage de nombreux puits. Les premiers servaient à l'exploration et à l'évaluation du champ. Aujourd'hui, le forage de puits horizontaux ou de puits avec des géométries complexes se fait couramment. Les puits ERD (Extended Reach Drilling) permettent d'atteindre des réservoirs éloignés. Le forage est une occasion unique d'acquérir des données afin de prendre des décisions en temps réel menant à une optimisation globale de la productivité du puits. Toutes les nouvelles technologies, forage, acquisition et transfert de données, moyens de calcul rapide donnent l'occasion de fournir au géologue, à l'ingénieur de réservoir et au foreur l'information précise pour prendre de meilleures décisions. Des nouveaux outils doivent être conçus pour permettre une utilisation optimisée de cette information. Les données doivent être transformées en une information utilisable afin que des décisions puissent être prises rapidement avec un faible niveau de risque. En outre, il reste la nécessité de faire l'évaluation économique en temps réel du puits de sorte que la décision de poursuivre le forage ou non soit également prise en cours de forage. Dans ce dossier, différentes techniques utilisées dans le forage seront discutées. Ce sera aussi l'occasion d'illustrer des résultats de projets de recherche réalisés par l'IFP et ses partenaires.

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Interactive Drilling : the Up-To-Date Drilling Technology

Oil & Gas Science and Technology - Rev. IFP, Vol. Interactive Drilling: The Up-To-Date Drilling Technology O. Vincké C. Mabile - Interactive Drilling: The Up-To-Date Drilling Technology - Drilling technologies have made much progress the last twenty years. In the past, many wells had to be drilled before and during the development of an oil field. The first wells were devoted to exploration and appraisal and the following ones to development of the oil field. Today, with horizontal drilling a common technique, wells with complex geometry can be drilled in a reservoir allowing the oil to be extracted from different places. Extended reach wells allow oil from remote locations to be reached. Furthermore, capitalizing on drilling is an efficient way to reduce the costs of appraisal, development and exploitation of an oil or gas field. Drilling is a unique opportunity to acquire data in order to take real time decisions leading to a global optimization of the drainage system. All the new technologies such as measurement while drilling, data acquisition, data transfer or high speed computing give the opportunity to provide the geologist, the reservoir engineer and the drilling engineer with more accurate information for taking better decisions. However new tools have to be designed to allow an optimized use of this information. Raw data must be transformed to high level of information so that decisions can be taken quickly with a low level of risk. However there is still the need - to perform real-time economic evaluation of the well so that the decisions to drill one meter more can be also taken on economic simulations. In this revue, different techniques to generate high quality information from drilling data will be discussed. Some results issued from research projects managed by IFP and its partners will be addressed. 1 FOREWORD: INTERACTIVE DRILLING AND GEOSTEERING Geosteering can be defined as a particular highly interactive work process between different disciplines in planning and drilling the different phases of a well. The aim of geosteering is to obtain an accurate well location in the reservoir to maximize the well productivity. It is more particularly dedicated to the steering of horizontal drains. Geosteering is carried out using tools and well techniques that allow to: – acquire the data (surface and downhole) in real time with bi-directional telemetry; – process, analyze and interpret the data during the drilling process; – interpret/estimate/visualize while drilling on remote sites; – update the geological model and the well path according to the processed data; – pilot the well. Interactive drilling includes all techniques which aim to improve the drilling of the well. Therefore, geosteering is included in unteractive drilling but interactive drilling includes also processes such as alarms on drilling parameters, drillpipe fatigue estimation or well bore stability. 2 INTRODUCTION [1] Drilling technologies have much progress the last twenty years. Before, to develop an oil field, many wells were drilled. The first ones were devoted to exploration and appraisal and the following to development of the oil field. The choice of the drilling technique had no real impact on the capital expenditure. Now, horizontal drilling is a common technique, wells with complex geometry can be drilled in a reservoir allowing the oil to be extracted from different places. Extended reach wells allow oil from remote locations to be reached. All these new technologies are now available and at a reasonable cost. This is due to three following major breakthroughs. 2.1 Directional Drilling Technology The improvement in mud motors and in PDC bits (polycrystalline diamond cutter) have been the key points. Mud motors with a bent housing allow the well to be steered accurately towards the target. With PDC bits the time to drill the well is greatly reduced. However steering is done with no drillpipes rotation (sliding mode) with, as a consequence, higher risks and a slower rate of penetration (ROP). In the middle of the 1990’s, the appearance of the rotary steerable systems (RSS) allows a combination of the advantages of the two traditional techniques: the precision of mud motors and performance of the rotary drilling. This technology reduces the risk of stuck pipes by better hole cleaning and increases the ROP by better weight transfer to the bit and a smoother well path. 2.2 Measurements while Drilling Not only the drilling technology but also the gathering of data while drilling has made progress. Since its introduction in the mid seventies, computerized mud logging services have continuously improved to contribute to an optimization of the drilling process in terms of safety and cost savings. Online monitoring of key parameters is backed by the use of a relational database (vs time and vs depth) which enables offline work on the main drilling events recorded (such as tripping or cementing) in relation to (...truncated)


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O. Vincké, C. Mabile. Interactive Drilling : the Up-To-Date Drilling Technology, Oil & Gas Science and Technology, 2004, pp. 343-356, Volume 59, Issue 4, DOI: 10.2516/ogst:2004025