Page 41 - Practical Well Planning and Drilling Manual

Section 1 revised 11/00/bc 1/17/01 2:55 PM Page 17

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1.2

Well Design: General

The well design defines the desired final status of the well. The
design, therefore, defines casing sizes, grades, weights, connections, and
setting position (relative to depths or formation tops). Cement tops and
particular requirements will be noted. It will define whether the well is
to be completed, tested, suspended, or abandoned. Precompletion sta-
tus (e.g., permanent packers, perforation intervals, downhole sand con-
trol measures such as gravel packs, completion fluid) and required com-
pletion design, wellhead, and Xmas tree will be specified. Surface loca-
tion and directional requirements are also part of the well design.
Once the well design is known then the drilling program can be
written to achieve the well design safely and cost effectively.
The steps to take to design the well include the following:

Summarize and evaluate all relevant offset information. This first
stage is vital if you want to write the best possible drilling pro-
gram. (Refer to “Sources of offset data,” “Hole section sum-
maries,” and “Field operational notes” in Section 1.1.2., Data
Acquisition and Analysis)

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