Page 154 - Practical Well Planning and Drilling Manual

Section 2 revised 11/00/bc 1/17/01 12:04 PM Page 130

[ ] Well Programming
2.1.2

Miscellaneous:

Equipment checklists

Approval signatures:

Signatories need to state clearly what responsibility they
are accepting by signing. If the program is later amended then
those areas of responsibility will show who needs to accept the
amendment.
If company policy dictates that certain managers sign without
responsibility, then it should be noted as “Signed to acknowledge
program seen.”

2.1.2. Technical Justification

The technical justification document explains the reasoning
behind decisions made while creating the drilling program. It also pro-
vides references to other sources of information where relevant.
In some areas, government regulations require that all technical
decisions are documented. This is good practice in any case.
There are five important reasons for writing a technical justifica-
tion document:

1. Having to justify all major decisions in the drilling program forces
the program author to use a proper engineering approach to prob-
lem solving and drilling optimization.
2. During program approval, the signatories can satisfy themselves
that the program has a good engineering basis.
3. During drilling, decisions made can be re-examined in the light of
new information and this can be done with full access to the orig-
inal reasoning. Therefore, better decisions are possible during
drilling, even if the original program author is not available.
4. Being able to justify all significant points in the drilling program
on engineering and cost grounds should lead to fuller cost recov-
ery in some areas. (Cost recovery is a mechanism for the opera-
tor recovering the cost of drilling the well by offsetting against

130