Survey Steering Tool: The Ultimate for Saving Rig Time
Authors: Marshall Gailen D. 
Published: December 2007

American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers, Inc.

This paper was prepared for the Improved Oil Recovery Symposium of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME, to be held in Tulsa, Okla., March 22–24, 1976. Permission to copy is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words. Illustrations may not be copied. The abstract should contain conspicuous acknowledgment of where and by whom the paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request to the Editor of the appropriate journal provided agreement to give proper credit is made. provided agreement to give proper credit is made. Discussion of this paper is invited. Three copies of any discussion should be sent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers office. Such discussion may be presented at the above meeting and with the paper, may be considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines.

The Survey Steering Tool System available to the drilling industry today is a culmination of five years of successful field-proven development and progress. These five years, with thousands of hours of proven performance, point up the fact that a Survey Steering System will save many hours of valuable rig time. The saving of rig time may be accomplished in many ways. It matters not what the actual cost per day of the rig, the Survey Steering per day of the rig, the Survey Steering System will save enough rig time to economically justify the cost of using the system with a mud motor when a course change is necessary.

Introduction

Perhaps the most important consideration in using this system to save rig time is in keeping the mud motor properly oriented and drilling along the desired course. There are many other benefits to the operator that may not be readily apparent. The problems of Dog-Leg Severity are greatly minimized by using the system with a mud motor. Several years experience has shown the use of the Survey Steering System with a mud motor allows operators to drill some holes which previously were not economically feasible.

Another rig-time saver is the ability to survey the hole while it is being drilled. The time required to orient a mud motor on a given well may take several hours for orienting alone, and then, if the mud motor should stall out just once, this time consuming procedure must be repeated. The ability to survey while drilling will allow the directional driller to maintain a desired course in order to arrive at the prescribed target in a minimum of drilling prescribed target in a minimum of drilling time. The general practice used by a directional engineering company is to design a program for the directional hole program for the directional hole establishing the course deviations along with the desired rate of angle change in order to achieve the required horizontal displacement to reach the desired target. Experience has shown that many hours of rig time are used in making correction runs with different bottom-hole assemblies in order to stay on the predetermined course.