Landmark’s Pore Pressure and Geomechanics Solutions allows operators to model complex environments and analyze wells drilled near and below salt.

Today’s oil and gas wells are challenging. Reservoirs are buried deep under large salt bodies, tight gas shales, carbonates in the Middle East, and tectonically stressed areas worldwide. These all present operators with a variety of pore pressure and geomechanics challenges. While hardware tools have advanced, operators still experience pressure-related problems such as stuck pipe, lost circulation, wellbore collapses, and blowouts. Working with an advisory committee of more than ten leading global operators and the Subsalt Joint Industry Project, Landmark developed an integrated pore pressure and geomechanics system to help operators manage these problems.

The system is said to be technically significant for three reasons. First, it brings a complete, integrated system across the asset lifecycle that combines industry leading pore pressure analysis, 3-D visualization and analysis, seismic velocity correction, and seal integrity analysis with wellbore stability analysis and real-time analysis. For example, geoscientists can perform an analysis for exploration and pre-drill well planning and mark definitive curves of their final analysis. An engineer can then create and populate a wellbore stability model with 50% of the work already complete and then easily update the model in real time.

Second, most operators currently do not have a way to centrally capture and share critical pressure/stress/and LOT information. Landmark’s system provides relational databases for storing, managing, and sharing geopressure and geomechanical data.

Third, it gives operators the ability to better handle complex geological environments where traditional approaches fail. For example, reservoirs below salt present a variety of challenges such as poor seismic imaging, rubble zones that cause wellbore instability, and pressure ramps that can test well programs. The system includes modeling techniques and drilling best practices to help operators manage these challenges.

The system also includes enhancements for development and production drilling, with the ability to analyze pressures for highly deviated and upward drilling sections, and fully integrated leak-off test analysis.

Pore pressure and wellbore stability related problems cost the industry in excess of US $8 billion per year, and impact personnel safety and the environment. The Landmark Pore Pressure and Geomechanics Solution is helping operators manage these problems and impact their bottom line across the lifecycle from reducing time to first oil and exploration costs to optimizing development and production programs.

The solution delivers several innovations such as subsalt geopressure analysis to manage these costly challenges by filling gaps in operator workflows. The ability to now centrally capture this critical information allows siloed geological and geophysical and drilling teams to use each other’s work, collaborate, and improve future well planning.

During the Subsalt Joint Industry Project (an extension of the DEA 119 study) conducted from 2005 to 2007 with 12 operators, the system’s new technology was developed and tested to manage the challenges of drilling near and below salt. The study modeled the Mahogany, Tahiti, and Typhoon subsalt basins in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) and confirmed the functionality, accuracy, and usefulness of the technology.

Commercial applications on wells ranging from Malaysia to the GoM over the last two years have demonstrated that real-time updates with the system’s innovative look ahead of the bit while drilling are providing high levels of accuracy, with 80% within 0.5 ppg and 90% within 1 ppg, 2,000 ft (610 m) and farther ahead of the bit.

For a major operator in the Middle East in a difficult geological regime where petrophysical approaches fail due to carbonates, analysts were able to use hydrodynamic modeling and integrated wellbore stability analysis to more accurately predict pore pressures and prevent borehole stability problems. The analysts remotely monitored eight fields in real time and were able to help the operator significantly reduce non-productive time from stuck pipe and lost circulation and shorten overall drill time.