Innovative In-house Geosteering Utilizes Gas-While-Drilling Data for Deep Jurassic High Angle Well Placement

Abstract

The directional drilling companies in oil industry usually provide well placement services using proprietary geosteering software that utilize conventional Logging-While-Drilling (LWD) data. Usually online access to the recorded logs is available to end users, but often very limited capability exists within the oil companies to test geosteering interpretations and advise. Present paper shares the case studies of some wells in which Gas-While-Drilling (GWD) data was used in conjunction with the LWD data for well placement. Furthermore, the Geosteering Module of a third party 3D Geological modeling software was used independently within the West Kuwait Fields Development group of KOC for well placement. Well D-08 was drilled as vertical producer in a West Kuwait Marrat carbonate reservoir, produced economic quantities of oil during initial testing, but it started cutting high amount of water due to the effect of a fault. Therefore, the well was re-entered and sidetracked at a high angle, away from the fault. Similarly, the U-73 vertical well which encountered poor reservoir facies on flank of the field, was re-entered for productivity enhancement into a thin porous reservoir layer as horizontal sidetrack towards the crest. Both these wells were monitored and geosteered in near real-time using a geosteering software module which combines the overall structural framework provided by 3D geological model, along with the well log responses characteristics from offset wells, to produce a detailed pre-drill model for Geosteering. This is achieved by forward modeling to predict changes in log characters along the planned wellbore profile. The results are displayed both in vertical and measured depth domains along a 2D curtain section with formation tops parallel to the planned well azimuth. In addition to the conventional LWD logs, the GWD logs generated from advanced gas analysis of the drilling mud were used for geosteering during drilling well D-08 and U-73 re-entry sidetrack wells. The LWD and GWD based geosteering were done independent of each other to test the efficacy of GWD method. Geosteering software and advanced mud gas data have been paired for high angle and horizontal well placement for the first time in Kuwait which successfully guided the well trajectory while drilling.