Directional drilling positioning calculations

Abstract

In today's technology wells are mostly being drilled directional. Accurate positioning of the wells is required to be precisely known. During drilling the surveys of well trajectories is often calculated by one out of four calculation methodologies in use. The summary of the wellbore trajectory calculation methodologies in use by the industry are given in an Appendix. A new calculation methodology is proposed in the scope of this study which is termed as “Improved Tangential Method”. The geometry of three hypothetical wells (J-type, S-type and Horizontal) are utilized, assuming that the directional survey calculations for these three wells are accurate. The differences in between the calculations by different methods, and geometrically calculated well survey details are compared to each other. The findings reveal that the proposed Improved Tangential Method is very accurate and it calculates the directional drilling trajectory with the least variance between the accurate geometrical calculations. By other means the directional trajectories can be calculated with improved accuracy without the drawback of the existing calculation methodologies. Future directional trajectories can be calculated with this proposed methodology, this way a common ground for all of the trajectory calculations can be achieved in the industry.