Tutorial for Well Trajectories Design

using Petrel RE 2011.1

Contents

Introduction ......................................................................................................................................3
Pre- requisites....................................................................................................................................3
Learning Objectives ............................................................................................................................3
Well Trajectory Design .......................................................................................................................3
Creating a vertical well .......................................................................................................................3
Well Path Design ................................................................................................................................4
Quality control for the new well .........................................................................................................6
Editing a Well Trajectory ....................................................................................................................8
Automatic creation of Well Trajectories..............................................................................................9
Laterals addition .............................................................................................................................. 11
Moving a well .................................................................................................................................. 13

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Introduction

This tutorial focuses on well trajectory design using Petrel RE. The generation of vertical and complex
wells (deviated, horizontal and multilateral) is shown. Special options as the automatic generation of
new wells and their displacements are also depicted.

Pre- requisites

Basic knowledge of Petrel.

Learning Objectives

In this tutorial we will learn:

How to design a well using the "Well path design" process.
How to perform a quality control of the designed trajectories.
How to edit well trajectories using the "Well path design" process.
How to place a new well automatically using the "Best fit" option.
How to add laterals to an existing well using the Laterals design process.
How to displace an existing well using the Move well option.

Well Trajectory Design

We will focus on how to create new well traces in Petrel. The simplest way to create a well is to make a
vertical one. The Well path design process, located under Well engineering in the Processes panel
allows new well traces to be digitized and the Laterals design option makes very simple to add laterals
to an existing well.

Creating a vertical well

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1. Open the attached project.

2. Go to Input, right click on the "Wells" folder and select "New Well". In the window that pops-out
enter the coordinates of the new well (X: 1868918.75, Y: 7112577.36, Bottom MD: 15225) as shown
in the Figure 1. The well will be stored in the "Wells" folder.

Figure 1. Generation of a vertical well.

Well Path Design

The "Well path design" process allows well trajectories to be created manually or automatically using
the "Create best fit well" option.

When the well is being designed manually the first step is to digitize and edit the desired trajectory. This
task can be done in diverse ways; we will go through them:

1. Create a new 3D window and in the "Models" tab select the property called Perm.

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2. Notice that the tool bar to the right of the screen is now activated.

Figure 2 Tools bar activation.

3. Activate the filter in "K" direction to display all cells belonging to the same layer; go to the
layer 9.

4. Go again to the "Processes" tab, display the "Well engineering" options and click on "Well path
design"; the tool bar for well construction will become active.

5. Click on the "Start new well" icon and digitize a well over the active layer. The new well will be
stored in the "Proposed Wells" folder under Input -> Wells.

6. Right click on the new well and access "Settings". Set the well type to "Standalone" and enter the
same surface coordinate as for the vertical well. The kickoff should be 8625 as shown in Figure 3.
Notice how the new trajectory is now extended to the surface coordinate.

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 Figure 3. New well trajectory.

Quality control for the new well

1. A good practice to know the details of the new trajectory is to open the spreadsheet of the well.
For that make right click on the well and select "Spreadsheet"; a window like the one shown in
Figure 4 will be displayed. You can edit in this window the well coordinates and observe its TVD, MD,
azimuth, inclination and DLS (Dog Leg Severity).

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 Figure 4. Spreadsheet of the new trajectory.

2. The DLS can also be displayed interactively on a 3D window by clicking on the "Show/hide DLS

colors" icon, located in the "Well path design" tool bar.

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 Figure 5. DLS displayed in a 3D window.

Editing a Well Trajectory

Petrel offers the possibility of manually editing well traces with movements over a vertical plane,
tangent line or freely in the space. For every case Petrel will keep track of the DLS and will give warnings
if the maximum value is reached or exceeded.

1. In the "Models" tab deselect the property Perm.

2. Activate the Move in Vertical plane only" icon in the tool bar located to the right of your
screen and try to displace the design points vertically till the trajectory looks completely horizontal
(the same task could be performed through the spreadsheet by modifying the depth of every
point).

Figure 5. Manually editing a well trajectory.

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Automatic creation of Well Trajectories

Petrel allows a well to be automatically placed in a volume of interest, with restrictions such on well
maximum and minimum length, surfaces, anti-collisions etc.

1. To use the "Best fit option it is necessary to generate a discrete variable indicating the volume
where the new well is to be placed. For the purpose of this tutorial that property has been
generated for you and can be found in the Models tab and was called "WellRegion". Create a new
3D window and visualize this property.

2. Double click on "Well path design" and in "Method" select "Create best fit well". In Well Heads
drop "Platform" (you can find it in the "Misc" folder under "Input"). Drop in the property
"WellRegion" and delete "Code 0" to indicate that the volume of interest is given by the cells with
value of 1 only.

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 Figure 6. Best Fit option

3. Select Make run. The new well will be stored in the "Optimized Wells folder and will look as in the
Figure 8.

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 Figure 7. Well generated through best fit

Laterals addition

1. Open a new 3D window.

2. Activate the well InTouch3.
3. Under "Well engineering" double click in the "Laterals design" process.
4. Drop in the well InTouch3 in "Main well" and default the rest.
5. Click over "Laterals template", to define the geometry of the laterals. Enter the requested values as
in Figure 9 (offset MD: 15259; laterals length: 1600; number of laterals: 4; spacing: 200; azimuth:
40).
6. Select Create New: Laterals. The new wells will be stored here.

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 Figure 8. Laterals design process.

Figure 9. New laterals.

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Moving a well

The new versions of Petrel incorporate the option of spatially displacing a well or well folder. The
procedure is as follows:

1. Double click on "Well path design" and select "Move well as the method.
2. Drop the well "InTouch3" in the process and enter the values to move the well by (X and Y=2000
and Z=300).
3. The displaced well will be stored in the folder "Optimized wells" and should look as in Figure 11.

Figure 10. Moved well.

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