Patent ID: 8145462
Filing Date: 2012-03-27
Classification: E21B

Abstract:
1. A method for optimizing the performance of a drilling device for drilling a selected well bore in a drilling field comprising: obtaining well logs and drilling data from at least three different offset wells in the drilling field associated with the selected well bore; synthesizing the well logs and drilling data from the at least three different offset wells by processing the data to determine geological field trends in the drilling field and thereby generate synthesized field data for the well bore to be drilled in the drilling field; evaluating the synthesized field data in a plurality of drilling contexts, wherein each drilling context is a geologic context or a well profile; selecting at least one critical drilling context from the plurality of drilling contexts for predicting drilling performance, wherein the at least one selected critical drilling context includes a drilling context that affects the drilling performance more than at least one of other drilling contexts from the plurality of drilling contexts; simulating the performance of at least two drilling devices in the at least one selected drilling context; comparing the performance of the at least two drilling devices in the at least one selected drilling context; selecting one of the at least two drilling devices for drilling the selected well bore based on the comparison of the simulated performance of the at least two drilling devices; and initiating drilling of the selected wellbore using the selected drilling device.