Seismic-while-drilling applications from the first DrillCAM trial with wireless geophones and instrumented top drive

Abstract

Advanced geophysical sensing while drilling is being driven by trends to automate and optimize drilling and the desire to better characterize complex near surface and overburden in desert environments. We introduce the DrillCAM system, which combines a set of geophysical techniques from seismic while drilling (SWD), drill-string vibration health, estimation of formation properties at the bit, and imaging ahead of and around the bit. We present data acquisition, processing, and initial application results from the first field trial on an onshore well in a desert environment. In this study, we focus on SWD applications. For the first time, wireless geophones installed around a rig were used to acquire continuous data while drilling. We demonstrate the feasibility of such a system to provide flexible acquisition geometries that are easily expandable with increasing bit depth without interference from drilling operations. Using a top-drive sensor as a pilot, we transform the drill-bit noise into meaningful and reliable seismic signals. The data were used to retrieve a check shot while drilling, make kinematic look-ahead predictions, and obtain a vertical seismic profiling corridor stack matching surface seismic. Robust near-offset check-shot signals were received from roller-cone and polycrystalline diamond compact (PDC) bits above 7200 ft after limited preprocessing of challenging single-sensor data with supergrouping. Detecting signals from deeper sections drilled with PDC bits may require more advanced processing by using an entire 2D spread of wireless geophones and downhole pilots. The real-time capabilities of the system make the data available for continuous data processing and interpretation that will facilitate drilling automation and improve real-time decision making.

Drill‐bit position monitoring using seismic‐while‐drilling data; numerical and field examples from Sweden

“…Such an example was presented by Bakulin et al. (2020). If other drilling methods were to be used, a pilot sensor would be an advantage (Poletto & Miranda, 2004).…”

“…Borehole ahead-of-the-bit imaging has successfully been conducted for several drilling operations (Aldawood et al, 2021;Bakulin et al, 2020;Goertz et al, 2021;Ivandic et al, 2022;Poletto et al, 2022;Wang et al, 2019). SWD has also proven useful for imaging the shallow subsurface (Aldawood et al, 2021;Asgharzadeh et al, 2019;Bakulin et al, 2020). Chamarczuk et al (2021) presented the applicability of using signals generated by drilling operations other than drilling itself (e.g.…”

“…Processing sequences for drill‐bit signal enhancement vary from study to study, but most of them include frequency filtering, FX median filtering (Goertz et al., 2021), FK rig noise removal (Wang et al., 2015) and deconvolution (Asgharzadeh et al., 2019; Bakulin et al., 2020; Houbiers et al., 2020; Poletto & Miranda, 2004; Poletto et al., 2014). In a marine environment, hydrophone and vertical component geophone (PZ) summation is used to separate the up‐ and down‐going wavefields (Houbiers et al., 2020; Poletto et al., 2022).…”

“…This was followed by many developments, including a numerical study on locating scatterers during tunnelling without a pilot trace (Harmankaya et al., 2018). Borehole ahead‐of‐the‐bit imaging has successfully been conducted for several drilling operations (Aldawood et al., 2021; Bakulin et al., 2020; Goertz et al., 2021; Ivandic et al., 2022; Poletto et al., 2022; Wang et al., 2019). SWD has also proven useful for imaging the shallow subsurface (Aldawood et al., 2021; Asgharzadeh et al., 2019; Bakulin et al., 2020).…”

Subsurface seismic imaging with a hammer drilling source at an exploration drilling test center in Örebro, Sweden

“…The idea of using the drill-bit as a seismic source has been around since the late 1980s or earlier (Rector and Marion, 1991) and has been advocated by a number of researchers over the years (e.g. Malusa et al, 2002;Poletto and Dor-dolo, 2002;Poletto et al, 2012;Petronio and Poletto, 2002;Bakulin et al, 2020). The basic principle is that the seismic signal generated by the drill-bit is simultaneously recorded by a pilot sensor mounted on the top of the drill string and by seismometers deployed on the surface at multi-offset positions from the borehole or in a second borehole.…”