Open Access

ARTICLE

A New Well Profile for Extended Reach Drilling (ERD)

Tengfei Sun¹, Deli Gao^1,2, Hui Zhang¹

1 Key Lab of Petroleum Engineering in the Ministry of Education, China University of Petroleum, Beijing 102249, China.
2 Corresponding author: Deli Gao. E-mail: gaodeli@cup.edu.cn

Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences 2013, 90(1), 37-46. https://doi.org/10.3970/cmes.2013.090.037

Abstract

Well profile design is one of the critical technologies in extended reach drilling (ERD), because an optimum well profile is an effective means for reducing the torque, drag and cost. This paper proposes a new well profile based on an inverse proportional function, and the new profile design method is analyzed in detail. The new well profile is also compared with other existing well profiles in many aspects such as the hook load, the maximum well curvature, the well length, the torque and so on. The results show that the well profile design based on an inverse proportional curve is superior to the existing well profiles used for drilling extended-reach wells, in several aspects such as the maximum well curvature, drag, torque and well length. It is expected that the use of this new well profile may play an important role in the design of extended-reach drilling wells in the future.

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Keywords

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