Summary

Drilling operations are a significant cost in the process of recovering hydrocarbons. The
operations are advanced and associated with large HSE and financial risks. The main
objectives in a successful drilling operation are to construct safe and economically efficient
wells, but the success also depends on hitting the target. As the drilling operation has very
high standards of execution, a good drilling operation depends on a good well plan.

The planning phase is a large and complex process as it engineers all aspects of a drilling
operation. This is key to create safe and economically efficient wells. Well trajectory planning
is a mixture of many parameters but in the end it comes down to identifying the most
optimum well path. That means they should be based on exact mathematical calculation
models, to precisely calculate well bore trajectories. The industry uses a number of different
planning tools that makes it possible to calculate and plan complex well path trajectories.
Very few studies have addressed this topic in a systematic manner.

In this thesis, a large study has been made on the background of well planning and the well
planning software’s used in the industry today. The industry leader within well planning
software is Halliburton Landmark’s Compass. Compass has been used as a base study in this
thesis. Work presented, has looked at three essential parts of the well planning software.

1. The Software Model

2. The Calculation Models
3. The Functions

The main objective of this thesis has been to identify the different calculation models used in
these programs and to program suitable functions similar to those found in existing planning
softwares, in an attempt to create a new and more user friendly well planning software. Also,
there is not much in the literature or information supporting what the different software
models do to create well paths – so a better understanding of the engineering of 3D well paths
has been developed.

A study was done to find/map different calculation methods that develop precise wellbore
coordinates. A number of calculation models were found, but the bulk of these models is
presented as models that are used to calculate already drilled wells. However, two new
methods were identified. The method called “Exact departures, Constant Turn Rate Method”