URTeC: 2697532

If It’s So Easy, Why Don’t You Come Do It Yourself? A Response to

“What I Wish My Geologist Knew About Drilling: A Drilling Engineer’s
View of Geosteering”
Raymond L. Woodward*, The BHL Companies
Samuel F. Noynaert, Texas A&M University
Copyright 2017, Unconventional Resources Technology Conference (URTeC) DOI 10.15530/urtec-2017-2697532

This paper was prepared for presentation at the Unconventional Resources Technology Conference held in Austin, Texas, USA, 24-26 July 2017.

The URTeC Technical Program Committee accepted this presentation on the basis of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). The contents of this paper
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Abstract
With few exceptions, the justification for drilling a horizontal oil-gas well is rather simple – make a relatively thin,
sub-economic reservoir into a much thicker, highly productive one by exposing much more reservoir to the bore
hole. A critical element, therefore, is keeping the well bore in the right stratigraphic interval. That is “geosteering”,
more properly called “stratigraphic geosteering”. Money-disposal wells, frac sand disposal wells, and cement
storage facilities require little skill or collaboration, but a successfully geosteered horizontal well is always a
collective effort involving pre-drill, while-drill, and post-drill input from geoscience and engineering disciplines.
While the team’s goal is usually a commercially productive well, the various individuals’ goals might really be
keeping one’s job, receiving bonus pay, earning a raise, and maybe climbing the corporate ladder into a role that
does not involve phone calls from a drilling rig at every hour of every day. As noted in this paper’s predecessor in
2016 (Noynaert 2016), costly obstacles frequently lurk in the interface between engineering and geology
professionals, especially when considering individual-level goals and performance metrics.

This paper is intended to simply address what geo-scientists wish their managers and drilling engineering
counterparts understood better about real-world geosteering. An honest geoscientist might summarize geosteering
challenges this way, “Only God can actually see down there, and He’s not talking about it!” Specifically, we seek to
present an overview of pre-drill geologic uncertainty (structural and stratigraphic); while-drill geologic uncertainty
of both types; positional uncertainty inherent in directional surveys which drive more geologic uncertainty; MWD -
LWD data quality and reliability issues; and organizational challenges of at least three types. Too often there is an
expectation that the geosteering professionals’ decisions are exact and should have no error. This should not be the
case as petroleum engineers, in any operational or managerial role, deal with uncertainty on a daily basis.

It is true that this paper, along with Noynaert’s paper, is purposely intended to slightly antagonize the geosteering
team – geology, engineering, directional companies, surface loggers, or rig crews. But this is not the main goal and
is not intended to do so simply to “stir the pot.” Instead, the real goal is to shed realism on the whole process in
hopes of more collaborative, efficient, and economically successful wells. The hoped for result is a genuine
discussion that leads to changes in the way the geosteering process works within a given company. As noted in the
previous paper, the geosteering process is one is truly requires a team and simply cannot be effective if one part of
the team is not functioning. Noynaert illustrated this concept using the “fire triangle” of geosteering (Fig. 1).

One of the authors has spent over a decade training a great many geosteering professionals, and much of what
follows will be as unsettling and annoying to some geosteerers as it is to their engineering counterparts, managers,
and directional service providers. The authors must be clear that there is no blame to be placed. Instead, there needs
to be clear understanding around what is truly limiting and confounding the geosteering process in many of today’s
operations, both in terms of understanding the issues facing each involved discipline as well as workflows which can
be changed for the better.