Development of Impulse Radar LWD tool

When oil wells are drilled today, it is essential to gain as much knowledge as possible about the borehole and surrounding formation, often called formation evaluation. For drilling, this is achieved using Logging While Drilling (LWD) sensors. WELL ID develops equipment and analysis tools that can do formation evaluation. In the Petromaks project, WELL ID creates technology based on knowledge and experience we have acquired from previous projects. The technology measures into the formation with various electromagnetic waves to carry out formation evaluation. As part of this research work, WELL ID has made measurements on liquid-filled formations of various lithologies. Measurements have been made on formations that have both water and oil filled zones. The project has managed to distinguish between these liquid compositions using different types of electromagnetic waves and software. The project has gained access to other measurement data for formation evaluation to compare WELL ID's results against other calibrated measurement methods and the project has very good comparability. In many cases, the project has shown greater accuracy than recognized and calibrated measurement methods.

The results of this Petromaks2 project will be used as basis for building and commercializing an impulse radar LWD tool. For WELL ID, commercialization of such planned innovation will dramatically improve competitiveness, increase revenue and generate jobs. For the oil company such new LWD tool will give increased geological knowledge, important for both exploration wells and mature fields. It can also replace big and expensive LWD and wireline tools, which will reduce cost and time for drilling and well construction. The planned innovation, and subsequent realization of the innovation can be utilized in development of geothermal and CO2 injection wells.

When oil wells are drilled today, it is essential to get as much knowledge as possible about the borehole, and surrounding formation, often called formation evaluation. For drilling this is achieved with Logging While Drilling (LWD) sensors that are positioned in the bottom hole assembly (BHA). These sensors can for example give information about formation density, porosity and resistivity. Current LWD sensors like resistivity and gamma sensors are normally based on electronic platforms/ components from the 1990's and the oil industry has not taken advantage of the exponential development in miniaturized robust electronics and sensor over the last five years. Typical industries driving this development are space, drones, medical and autonomous cars, all with extreme requirements for sample rate, accuracy, vibration robustness and temperature limits, similar to requirements for logging while drilling sensors. WELL ID is in final stage of development & piloting "4D Caliper", a LWD tool based on Ultra- Wide Band (UWB) impulse radar technology. The technology originates from medical applications developed at the University of Oslo. 4D Caliper measures the distance from the LWD tool to the borehole wall. Testing and simulations have revealed that the impulse radar technology in 4D Caliper has the potential to be further developed to measure into the formation to conduct formation evaluation. Objective Conduct research and development on of a new LWD impulse radar solution and prove its capability to log formation permittivity and conductivity, at variable frequencies, giving formation evaluation measurements at different depth of investigations.