SPE-209530-MS

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Design, Optimization, and Visualization of Wellbore Trajectory in 3D

Hamed Sahebi, University of Stavanger; Ekaterina Wiktorski, AkerBP; Dan Sui, University of Stavanger

Copyright 2022, Society of Petroleum Engineers DOI 10.2118/209530-MS

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Norway Subsurface Conference held in Bergen, Norway, 27 April 2022.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents
of the paper have not been reviewed by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and are subject to correction by the author(s). The material does not necessarily reflect
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consent of the Society of Petroleum Engineers is prohibited. Permission to reproduce in print is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words; illustrations may
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Abstract
Well planning and well trajectory design in particular is a complex iterative process, which typically takes
several months and significant effort from drilling engineers and other field professionals. When several
wells are drilled from the same platform or subsea template, tubular program, cement program, and mud
program are rather consistent from one well to another. The biggest challenge lies in wellbore design, which
should allow fast, cost-efficient, and problem-free drilling and subsequent casing- and lower completion
running.
This paper presents 3D wellbore trajectory design and visualization modules within an in-house well
planning web software developed at the University of Stavanger. The design and optimization module
allows users to construct 3D wellbore trajectories using Bezier curves and optimize them with respect to
the geomechanical and hydraulic characteristics using a principle of hydraulic mechanical specific energy
(HMSE) and minimum drilling time. Other optimization criteria have been already developed separately
from the simulator and will be included in the later release.
The visualization module provides a 3D picture of the well under construction with respect to the
offset wells, statistics visualization and data filtering of the drilled wellbore sections to determine, for
instance, high ROP and low tortuosity areas. Volve data set, released by Equinor in 2018, was used for the
development and testing of the modules.
It is evident that the current well design methodology has a real potential for improvement. The
application of the newly developed well planning and visualization tool will reduce time the iterative
process takes, from hours and days to just several minutes. The advanced visualization tool will aid wellbore
construction by providing well planners and drilling engineers with information about possible problem
areas and opportunities during drilling. The new approach to wellbore trajectory design will make the well
planning more interactive, robust and time-effective.

Introduction
It is vital to be able to construct a wellbore in a way that drilling, completion and production phases
would satisfy the main criteria of being safe, efficient and ultimately financially beneficial for the company
operator. Three-dimensional visualization of a wellbore trajectory is a necessary part of this process. Being
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able to plan and plot a new well with respect to the offset wells, emphasizing the problematic areas or areas
of high performance, provides opportunities for a better wellbore design.
Nowadays, designing a new well path in a developed field with multiple offset wells is a big challenge.
The common well design method is based on multiple iterations, which are performed in series and involve
little degree of automation. It means that a well is designed based on certain criteria, and if defined criteria

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are not met after the first iteration, the well has to be redesigned. Such a way of wellbore design is time-
and resource-consuming.
The project of NCS drilling database web application funded by the UiS department of energy and
petroleum engineering started in May 2020 and created a full-time position for the main full stack developer.
In this web application, the elements of database, back-end, and front-end create a platform for academic and
industry users to access the drilling data from the Volve oil field and visualize it in custom- defined ways.
These data include rate of penetration, weight on bit, hook load, and other operational and nonoperational
parameters.
In parallel to the NCS drilling database, a well planning software was being developed by the same team.
The software allows the users to design and optimize wellpath based on minimum drilling time, or in other
words, maximum ROP. The newly designed well path can be visualized together with the offset wells so
that the user can instantly compare the planned well to the offset wells, this way making the evaluation of
the new design easier.

Literature review
Oilfield data visualization can be a challenging task due to the large amount of data points and values
averaging across time and depth. Poorly scaled and unfiltered data becomes useless and may even lead to
wrong decisions. Therefore, visualization tools should provide necessary information to the users without
overwhelming and misleading them. Saini et al. (Saini, 2018) for instance suggest a method based on the
storyboarding technique, which automatically generates a storyboard according to the user-defined KPIs.
The KPIs can include mechanical specific energy (MSE), rate of penetration (ROP), vibrations, trajectory
offset, etc. Some examples of storyboarding are presented in Fig.1 and Fig.2. This method allows users
to analyze drilling quality and performance of a single well, however, it does not offer comparison across
the wells.

Figure 1—Storyboarding example: planned vs. actual trajectory

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Figure 2—Storyboarding example, MSE comparison

Mechanical Specific Energy and Hydraulic Mechanical Specific Energy

MSE is recognized as an indicative measure of drilling efficiency both in academia and industry. Hence, a
number of studies have been published in the literature that use and expand the method. An example is Chen
et al. (Chen, Yang, & Gao, 2018), who analyzed field data and compared rock confined compressive strength
(CCS) with calculated MSE. They estimated optimum WOB at different RPM when drilling a specific
formation interval with PDM and concluded that low WOB is optimal for rotating drilling with PDM. By
being able to define optimum WOB, ROP could be maximized. Chen et al. (Chen X. F., 2014) proposed a
real-time drilling performance predicting and optimizing model by analyzing bottom-hole conditions during
drilling and using the mechanical specific energy concept. The developed drilling optimization model was
tested through field logging data, and the results showed high accuracy when predicting ROP.
The MSE expression, first suggested by (Teale, 1965), is based on two terms, where one accounts for the
rotational force, and another one accounts for the axial forces (Eq.1).

(1)

F : Axial force (lb)

A : Well bore area (in2)
N : Rotation per minute
Tq : Torque on bit (lb. in)
 u : Rate of penetration (in/m)
While most of the progress during drilling is by mechanical energy exerted by the bit, the hydraulic
energy in the drilling fluid is important too. The fluid exerts a jetting impact force on the formation as it is
pushed through the bit nozzles, other than transporting cuttings away from the path of the bit. By introducing
an extra term for hydraulic energy to the mechanic specific energy model, more accuracy is added to the
efficiency evaluation process (Tveit, 2016).
Hydraulic mechanical specific energy (HMSE) concept, also referred to as DSE (drilling specific energy)
was first presented by Armenta (Armenta, 2008). Using experimental and field data, the author showed
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that DSE has a better correlation with CCS when downhole readings are considered. He also showed
that no correlation existed between UCS and DSE when surface readings were used. Hydraulic energy is
represented by a first term in the HMSE equation below:

(2)

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In the above equation, Whyd is the work done by the jetting force of the fluid onto the formation, Waxi
is the work done by the WOB, and Wrot is the work done by the rotational motion of the bit onto the
formation. Eq.2 can be expanded as below and used to find the HMSE at different depths for drilled wells
in Volve database:

(3)

HMSE: (Pa)
N : RPM (s−1)
Δp: Pressure loss across the bit (Pa)
Q: Flow rate (L/s)
Ab: Hole section area (m2)
ROP: (m/s)
C: Field unit

Methodology
Volve oil field dataset published by Equinor in 2018 consists of several data types, including time-based
data and depth-based data, where the former one is more detailed and comprehensive than the latter one.
Therefore, time-series data was preferred to be used to calculate HMSE values. The time-series data has the
true vertical depth attribute, which has been used to find HMSE at certain depths. Data obtained from several
wells was analyzed, however, the consistent HMSE was achieved only on a few wells. An example of HMSE
visualization for a well can be found in Fig.3, where the rock hardness shows a sharp rise around 1400 (m)
TVD. Finally, the most accurate HMSE was referenced for a depth interval from 250 (m) TVD to 3500 (m)
TVD. In this prediction model, the geological layers are assumed to be horizontal without variations in the
local region, and the mechanical characteristics do not change along the horizontal direction.
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Figure 3—(a) Calculated HMSE on a well with specified geological zones based on the
rock hardness, (b) 3D trajectory visualization of the same well with the ROP attribute

Well path trajectory design

In this web application, wells are designed in three dimensions based on the Bézier curves method (Sampaio,
2017), which allows the construction of wellbores in 2D and 3D. Developed software uses third-order Bezier
curve for 3D trajectory design, which is given by Eq.4.
(4)
Bzr : Beziér coordinates [m]
 u: dimensionless parameter iterator, from 0 to 1
S: start point coordinates [m]
E: end point coordinates [m]
CS: attractor point respective to the start point [m]
CE: attractor point respective to the end point [m]
Curve attractors can be obtained as:
(5)
(6)
S can be defined as:
(7)
And

(8)
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Which are the start and endpoints tangent vectors. Assuming the trajectory endpoint is set, E can be
defined as:
(9)
The parameters k0 and k1 are two arbitrary scalars that control the curve tortuosity and length and are used

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as the main variables in the optimization method. Parameters (v, n, e) show the 3D position of a point with
respect to vertical position, north and east accordingly, and I and A are inclination and azimuth respectively.
The model output parameters are dogleg severity, inclination, azimuth, and measured depth which can be
obtained as:
(10)

(11)

Where t is the unit tangential vector and tv, te and tn are vertical, east, and north components accordingly.
Dog-leg severity can be obtained by the equation below:
(12)
Where,

(13)

and are the first and second derivatives of the Eq.4.

Well path trajectory optimization: minimum drilling time

In this method, ROP is back-calculated for each point along the trajectory by using HMSE values obtained
from the Volve data set. Then the drilling time is calculated point by point and summed up to find the total
net drilling time (T):

(14)

ROP is backcalculated from Eq.3:

(15)

Considering the above-mentioned method to calculate ROP, the proposed optimization problem is
formulated as shown below:
(16)
Subject to:

The constraints on k0 and k1 are respectively [kl0, ku0] and [kl1, ku1], which are self-defined acceptable
ranges. By solving this optimization problem, the optimal values k0 and k1 are obtained such that the
designed well trajectory will require minimum drilling time. Several simulations show that if the trajectory
start and end points and k0 and k1 intervals are selected inside acceptable range, the constraint for the DLS
along the trajectory is satisfied:
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(17)
DLSm is the maximum dogleg severity and n shows the number of points along the trajectory.

Trajectory visualization

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The web application developed for trajectory visualization and optimization has multiple options for
the visualization module including single visualization, statistical visualization, and multiple wells
visualization.

Single well visualization

In this visualization option, a user can select several wells with one attribute as, for instance, rotation per
minute (RPM). Then, one figure for each trajectory vs. selected attribute will appear, as in Fig.4. As seen
in the figure, each well is plotted in a separate window with a separate scale, and the number of divisions
and the selected attribute range is constant. The yellow buttons on top help the user to make a single large
figure and select the attribute range and the number of divisions (Fig.4).

Figure 4—Single visualization of two wells against the rotation per minutes attribute

Figure 5—Enlarged picture of wellbore trajectory with the assigned

values for the selected attribute range and the number of divisions
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Statistical visualization
In the statistical visualization (Fig.6), the focus is data points distribution of the selected attributes. It is
represented as a single window with multiple bar charts corresponding to each well. Statistical visualization
helps users to select the attribute value range and the number of divisions based on the desired level of
details to compare the values across the wells.

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Figure 6—Probability visualization showing the RPM distribution for two selected wells

Multiple wells visualization

This visualization mode helps engineers to get a comprehensive overview of the measured parameters across
the wells. First, the user is offered to select an attribute of interest, then well trajectories are color- coded
based on the attribute value as presented in Fig.7.

Figure 7—Example of multiple visualizations of three offset wells with rate of penetration as an attribute
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Case study on well path optimal design

This section aims to design and optimize a wellbore trajectory using the developed web application with
endpoints and operational characteristics similar to a well selected from the Volve field database. The Volve
well endpoints and other boundary conditions are as below:

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Table 1—Volve well (Norway-NA-15-47-9-F-9-A) endpoints and boundary conditions

Inc0 = 0 deg Az0 = 0 deg n0 = 6478561 (m) e0 = 435050 (m) v0 = 146 (m)

Inc1 = 58.83 deg Az1 = 190.55 deg n1 = 6478116 (m) e1 = 434980 (m) v1 = 1012 (m)

The same endpoints have been selected for the virtual well except for the v0, because a criterium for
optimization is that this number should be larger than 250 (m). For the operational data, the following
average values of the Volve well operational parameters have been used: flow rate = 3500(L/min), mud
weight = 1.2 (s.g.), bit nozzle area = 0.2 inch, RPM = 150, WOB = 100 kN and TOB = 10 kN.m.

Table 2—The hole section design for the virtual well based on the well from the Volve field

TVD, m 421 903 1010

Hole section diameter, inch 17.5 7 7

The optimization parameters k0 and k1 and the number of iterations are determined as below:

Where n represents the number of points in each direction: n points in k0 direction and n points in k1,
providing in this case total of 400 (20x20) iterations. The optimum values of k0 and k1 were found to be
315 and 585 respectively. The average ROPs on the Volve field well and the optimized well are respectively
37 (m/h) and 43 (m/h). The trajectory visualization of the offset well and the optimized well with respect
to ROP measurements can be found in Fig.8, and with respect to DLS – in Fig.9.
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Figure 8—Trajectory visualization of the reference well (Volve well) and the optimized well with ROP measurements

Figure 9—Trajectory visualization of the reference well (Volve well) and the optimized well with ROP measurements
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Conclusions
The web-based application for 3D trajectory design, visualization, and optimization was presented in this
paper. For wellbore trajectory design, 3D Bézier curves method was implemented, and minimum drilling
time was used as a criterium for trajectory optimization. The well-path trajectory optimization software uses

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iterative method, and the result is prepared within a few minutes, while the current well trajectory design
method used by the industry may take up to several days.
ROP was selected as an optimization criterium as it reflects the state of drilling, considering such
uncertainties as rock hardness and wellbore friction. ROP was back-calculated for the wells to be designed
using hydraulic mechanical specific energy obtained using the data from the Volve offset wells. A case
study was done to show the performance of the optimization mode of the application, where ROP for the
optimized trajectory was higher than for the original trajectory.
The main focus of the paper, however, was the development of an advanced visualization tool within
the well trajectory planning application. The visualization tool provides a 3D picture of the well under
construction with respect to the offset wells, as well as statistics visualization and data filtering of the drilled
wellbore sections to determine, for instance, high ROP and low tortuosity areas to improve future planning.
The advanced visualization tool has a potential to aid wellbore construction by providing well planners and
drilling engineers with a better idea about possible problem areas and opportunities during drilling.

References
Armenta, M. (2008). Identifying Inefficient Drilling Conditions Using Drilling-Specific Energy. SPE Annual Technical
Conference and Exhibition. Denver, Colorado: SPE.
Chen, X. F. (2014). Real-Time Prediction and Optimization of Drilling Performance Based on a New Mechanical Specific
Energy Model. Arabian Journal of Science and Engineering, 39, 8221– 8231.
Chen, X. Y. (2018). Drilling performance optimization based on mechanical specific energy technologies (Vol. 1). London,
UK: Intechopen Limited.
Saini, G. C. (2018, March 6-8). A Storyboarding Process to Quickly Extract Knowledge from Large Drilling Datasets.
IADC/SPE Drilling Conference and Exhibition. Fort Worth, Texas: Society of Petroleum Engineers.
Sampaio, J. H. (2017). Designing three-dimensional directional well trajectories using Bézier curves. Journal of Energy
Resources Technology.
Teale, R. (1965). The concept of specific energy in rock drilling. Journal of rock mechanics and mining sciences &
geomechanics abstracts, 2(1), 57-73.
Tveit, Ø. B. (2016). Model for evaluating drilling efficiency based on the concept of Mechanical Specific Energy. NTNU.