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REDUCE WELLBORE PLACEMENT UNCERTAINTY BY UP TO 60% | H&P SURVEY MANAGEMENT

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helmerich&payne

When drilling in congested fields, there is significant danger of catastrophic collisions with an existing (offset) wellbore. Apart from the economic damage of destroying two valuable wellbores, a collision may also result in a health, safety and environmental event. That is why many operators maintain anti-collision policies aimed at reducing the risk of such events. These policies define the safe distance that must be maintained between two wellbores to increase the separation factor (SF).

To increase the SF between a planned wellbore and its offset wells, the planned wellbore can sometimes be moved or shortened. However, these modifications to the well plan can result in suboptimal drainage and field development, stranded reserves, added drilling complexity or additional directional work. Instead of moving or shortening the planned wellbore, a more economical approach is to increase the positional accuracy by correcting survey measurements. The higher the confidence in their position, the more it increases the SF between the old and new wellbores - reducing the collision risk.

Therefore, before modifying the well plan to move the new wellbore to a suboptimal position, it is advised and has become widespread practice in the United States, to first increase the wellbore surveying accuracy as much as possible by employing enhanced survey management techniques. Well-established techniques of IFR, and advanced MWD analytics corrections reduce the wellbore placement uncertainty by up to 60%*.

Applying these techniques will significantly increase the SFs between new wells drilled in congested fields. Reach out to us if you are searching for your drilling partner: https://www.helmerichpayne.com/technologies/survey-management and contact us here: https://www.helmerichpayne.com/contact.

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