Short Course 4
Practical Geosteering: Avoid The Avoidable, Improve The Improvable, Know The Difference
Instructor: Raymond Woodward, BHL Companies and Jamie Woolsey, PQ GeoConsulting
Date: Saturday, October 3, 1:00 P.M. to 5:00 P.M.
Fee: $75 for professionals or $15 for students
Limit: 60 participants maximum (student spots are limited)
Includes: Refreshments & course notes will be provided
This course focuses on “real-world” geosteering — the conditions most often encountered in US onshore regions. Precise geosteering is critical to ensuring accurate placement of the wellbore within the “sweet spot” of the targeted interval. Particularly during low oil prices, maximizing reservoir exposure for increased production becomes essential. Equally so, unnecessary and expensive hole problems are often avoidable with smart, timely geosteering. This course will provide a brief overview of horizontal drilling, directional terminology as it relates to horizontal well placement, and practical realities and best practices of geosteering. Necessary data requirements and constraints, variations in data quality, interpretation of faults, bed thickness discrepancies, and depositional changes and how they affect geosteering techniques will also be discussed.
In addition, we will look at the most common points of failure, including oversimplification of pre-drill subsurface geology, overconfidence in the pre-drill geologic model, imprecise communications with the drillers, over-steering, and inaccurate MWD/LWD data. Remedies and applied work flows to overcome these hindrances will be addressed and case studies will be reviewed. This course is intended for geologists, engineers, and exploration/development managers who shall be steering wells and/or wish to better understand geosteering terms, techniques, and schematics.
Raymond Woodward received his geology degree from Baylor University in 1979. He joined Sonat Exploration in 1994 and spent 4.5 years in the earliest major horizontal play in the US — the Austin Chalk. This was foundational to his understanding of horizontal drilling and geosteering. Raymond founded BHL Consulting, Inc. in 1999, which lead to hands-on work in most US plays, Canada, and Morocco. Finding the need for better geosteering software, he developed BORESIGHT geosteering software program in 2003. BHL Boresight, Inc. was spun off from the consulting group and its software is now licensed to over 75 operating companies in the US and Canada.
Jamie Woolsey began her career focusing on conventional and unconventional reservoirs in the Arkoma Basin. Her geosteering expertise began in the structurally complex and stratigraphically variant Woodford Shale in Southeastern Oklahoma. As an associate of BHL Consulting, Jamie has steered over 400 wells for multiple E&P companies in various formations/basins, including: Eagle Ford, Woodford, Fayetteville, Utica, East Texas, North Louisiana and the Permian Basin. She holds a Bachelor’s of Science and Master’s of Science in Geology from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.