AnTech launches geosteering service for coiled-tubing drilling

AnTech has announced the launch of RockView – a technology that makes real-time, high-resolution geosteering possible for the first time, according to the company.

The breakthrough will enable more accurate wellbore placement and provide a tangible decrease in the amount of footage drilled out of zone. This will lead to a direct improvement in the production of a well.

Predicting the exact position of a target reservoir from surface is difficult and requires geosteering to analyze the cuttings returning from the bit or with logging while drilling tools positioned back from the bit. Both of these methods involve a delay between the time that the bit drills a formation and the time that the formation is identified.

The RockView service works by using the measurements gathered from the full range of sensors on AnTech’s latest generation COLT and POLARIS BHAs. Using proprietary techniques, these can be combined to determine how hard it is to drill through a particular rock formation.

The new technology offers considerable advantages over current methods of geosteering, which are accurate but suffer from limitations which delay the transmission of data.

RockView has been developed to mitigate that delay in service for wells that can be drilled with coil tubing. It provides near-instantaneous information about conditions at the bit and fine linear resolution. The directional driller can determine which formation is being drilled by comparing to logs prepared by geologists. The well trajectory can be adjusted to keep the drill bit in zone thereby avoiding the overshooting that can be caused by other geosteering methods.

“RockView is an exciting innovation for the industry,” Toni Miszewski, Managing Director of AnTech, said. “It will increase drilling productivity because it is an at-bit technology that will help the directional driller identify the target zone and then keep in zone. Inaccurate drilling reduces well output and is simply a waste of time and money. Predictability reduces the financial risk to operators and provides a much-needed increase in drilling efficiency, which has sometimes been lacking in the industry.”