JANUARY 2017 LUNCHEON MEETING
Raymond Woodward
presents
Horizontal Wells:
How to Waste Millions and Wreck Your Project
11:30 AM Wednesday, January 18, 2017
at the Cascades
4511 Briarwood Road
Tyler, TX 75709
Cost: $20
BIOGRAPHY
Woodward is the founder and president of BHL Consulting, Inc., a group of geologists which steers wells for numerous clients, historically including work in Northwest Canada, throughout North America, Central America, and Northwest Africa. Collectively, BHL Consulting has interpreted something in excess of twenty million total feet of horizontal hole. He is also founder-president of BHL Boresight, Inc. which owns, licenses, supports and continually advances BORESIGHT geosteering software, the market share leader in its niche for at least six years.
Woodward received his geology degree from Baylor University in 1979, worked for various independent operators in exploration, development and operational roles. He joined Sonat Exploration in 1994 where he was immersed in the early days of horizontal (Austin Chalk) wells and the early years of geosteering. He incorporated BHL Consulting in 2000 and BHL Boresight in 2008.
He has presented numerous geosteering sessions over the years, and taught AAPG Geosteering short courses at ACE and sectional meetings on six occasions, receiving the AAPG DPA ‘Best Paper Award’ in 2015.
ABSTRACT
Horizontal well drilling and completion technology and collective knowledge have made enormous strides in the last 20 years. But when it comes to keeping an expensive lateral in target, there remains a stubborn list of mistakes that are unnecessary but common and costly, particularly in the realm of geosteering. Put another way, much of our “bad luck” is man-made.
The most common misconceptions and pitfalls generally fall into three categories:
- Over simplification and over confidence in the pre-drill geologic model. The hard truth is that despite advances in technology, or sometimes because of advances in technology, the pre-drill geologic work-up usually includes at least a few errors. This will not be an in-depth session on geologic risk analysis, but some examples and reminders are included.
- Misuse of good data or acceptance of deficient data, either of which can start the old “Garbage-In-Garbage-Out” assembly line. Especially as technology has made it less necessary to visit the well site, there is a growing and unrealistic bias that all data is reliable. The most common origins and symptoms of deficient data will be highlighted.
- Procedural errors by the horizontal well operational team. This can largely be reduced to bad assumptions and communication failures. A few simple, no-cost changes can alleviate many of these issue.
We will take a compressed look at all three of these categories, lingering a bit longer in the data category.