Seismic guided drilling:a technology to reduce drilling risk and increase drilling success rate

Before drilling, it is essential to use surface seismic data and adjacent well information to create a subsurface earth model, a structural image volume, and a few estimates of the earth properties.These are used for well placement and well trajectory design.During actual drilling, it is often found that some of the pre-drill predictions are far from what have been encountered by the drill bit.The consequences may include drilling loss, sidetracking, or direct abandonment of the well itself.This is particularly true in early exploration of, for example, a deep-water area or an ultra-deep reservoir.To minimize the drilling risks and reduce non-production times, we have developed a seismic-guided drilling technology (Seismic Guided Drilling, SGD).SGD integrates multi-disciplinary existing technical workflows to build both geologically and geomechanically more plausible pre-drill baseline earth models, including a 3D imaging model and petrophysical properties, to create a more reasonable structure image and well prognosis, thereby helping further optimize the well placement and well trajectory.Without any impact on drilling operations, SGD utilizes existing 3D surface seismic data, MWD/LWD data, and drilling engineering data to refine the pre-drill baseline earth models in real time, further improving the accuracy of the seismic imaging and property estimation.As a result, the updated geological structure and pore pressure prediction around and ahead of the drill bit become more accurate, providing more reliable information for real-time drilling decisions.