As an integrated pore pressure and geomechanics system, Drillworks software helps operators manage pressure-related problems. Halliburton’s Landmark business line added the technology to its offerings when it acquired KSI.

“Today’s wells are more challenging and costly than ever before,” said Jeff George, product manager for Geopressure/Drillworks at Landmark. “New reservoirs are buried deep under large salt bodies, tight gas shales, carbonates in the Middle East, and tectonically stressed areas worldwide that present operators with a variety of pore pressure and geomechanical challenges that can shut down a drilling program.”

Even though hardware tools have advanced, operators still experience pressure-related problems such as stuck pipe, lost circulation, wellbore collapses, and blowouts. The company developed the pore pressure and geomechanics system with input from an advisory committee of more than 10 global operators and a subsalt joint industry project. In 2009 the system won the intelligent systems and components category of Hart Energy’s Meritorious Awards for Engineering Innovation.

The system has experienced much success since its introduction. When a large independent oil and gas company working offshore West Africa began facing challenging geomechanical issues – including highly uncertain pore pressures, subsurface stresses, and rock mechanical properties – Halliburton used the pore pressure and geomechanics system to address those issues. Additionally, the area in which the operator was drilling was relatively unexplored, which increased uncertainty.

“The operator determined Halliburton could provide the best solution to evaluate the stresses and rock mechanical properties using available real-time data and [could] recommend mud weight to prevent wellbore instability and reduce nonproductive time [NPT],” George said. Halliburton designed a solution using LWD, drilling data, and leak-off tests to generate and calibrate for wellbore stability and pore pressure using Drillworks software. Compressional Sonic was used in real time to generate synthetic rock strength parameters and a shear failure gradient. Cuttings/carvings and well events were observed for calibration. Benefits realized by the operator included decreased uncertainties in geopressures by identifying intervals of higher risk, recommendations on the operating mud weight window necessary for a stable wellbore, elimination of NPT that could have resulted from wellbore instability issues, and successfully drilling the well to total depth within a satisfactory timeframe.

Landmark has since worked to add new functionality to the product to meet the oil and gas industry’s changing needs.

“We have developed connectivity from Drillworks software to the EDM database and OpenWorks database to reduce the time spent transmitting critical data and results from one system to another,” George said. “From a geomechanics and geopressure point of view, we developed functionality to take advantage of near-wellbore stress analysis and breakout analysis from oriented caliper logs. This aids in determining the operational window and provides an indicator of horizontal stress orientation in the wellbore.”

In addition, the company has added data-level integration with its DecisionSpace software.

The company currently is developing 3-D pore pressure and fracture gradient workflows from seismic velocities and continued integration with DecisionSpace software.

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