Pressures and Overpressure in the Subsurface

3 Day Course
Pore pressure has a wide influence on the petroleum system and can be directly responsible for the success or failure of a prospect. For example, high pore pressure leads to more difficult to drill reservoirs with a narrow safety margin and it can also be the cause of dry holes due to seal breach. As such, an early understanding of the role that pore pressure plays in a basin is vital before deciding on where to drill for both trap risking purposes and for well planning.

In this course, Ikon harnesses our decades worth of experience in pore pressure, fracture gradient, and wellbore stability projects from basins across the globe to introduce basic and key concepts to the beginner, but also with enough detail and interest for those with some degree of subject familiarity.

The course is designed for geologists, geophysicists, petrophysicists and reservoir/drilling engineers who have an interest in, or need to utilise pressure data in their workflows, and wish to gain a deeper understanding of the relationships between geology and overpressure.

Detailed Course Overview
Examples of key topics of interest covered
  • Key criteria that define if an offset well is an appropriate analogue from which to base a well plan.
  • When should seismic velocity be used for pore pressure prediction? Is it fit for purpose?
  • Examples of breached traps and the circumstances in which they arise.
  • Highlight how ‘pore pressure’ may be interpreted differently by drillers/engineers/geologists.
  • Importance of sea water depth when comparing offset wells expressed in equivalent mud weight (EMW) units.
Case study discussion topics
  • Offset well selection in a mature petroleum basin and importance of considering the local structure.
  • A challenging well plan located on a sandstone horst block surrounded by variable lithology.
Practical exercises
  • How to analyse pressure data
  • How to calculate overburden and fracture gradients
  • How to use industry standard techniques to predict pore pressures in the pre-drill environment
Course tutors
  • EAME Region - Ed Hoskin
  • EAME Region - Michal Kepinski, PhD
  • Americas Region - Rashad Gulmammadov
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