Patent ID: 9482084
Filing Date: 2016-11-01
CPC Classification: E21B

Claim Text:
1. A method of drilling a wellbore through a subterranean formation, the method comprising the steps of: (a) receiving temporally evolving data from a drilling system while drilling regarding at least two drilling parameters, at least one of which is a controllable drilling operational parameter, the received data corresponding to an interval of drilling time; (b) calculating data-relationship statistics on the temporally evolving received data to identify non-overlapping subintervals of the received data where the subintervals are defined by conditions whereby the received data for the controllable drilling operational parameter of the at least two drilling parameters meets the criteria of having (i) a number of data points within a specified range of number of data points having standard deviations of the controllable drilling operational parameter that is not greater than a specified tolerance for the controllable drilling operational parameter, and (ii) a mean value that is within a specified range for such controllable drilling operational parameter, wherein the subintervals that are defined by such conditions are identified as a response point; (c) cataloging each identified response point within a response database, including cataloging at least one of a property determined from the received data for the identified response point and a corresponding performance value calculated using the received data for the identified response point; (d) locating the cataloged response point for the subinterval within a response map; (e) repeating steps (c)-(d) for each subinterval identified as a response point; and (f) selecting a mapped response point from the response database that meets a selected drilling performance characteristic and using at least one of the cataloged properties of and calculated values for the selected response point as a basis for making an operational adjustment for drilling the wellbore.