BHA Trend Analyzer Guide

1.0 Introduction

The BHA Trend Analyzer, available in Vantage, is designed to support drilling engineers in planning and monitoring wellbore trajectories during the landing phase.

The tool integrates survey data, dogleg severity (DLS), formation tops, and motor yields into a single interactive workspace. This enables engineers to:

Compare performance and trajectories against nearby offset wells.
Evaluate whether the planned landing is achievable with available motor yields.
Refine projections and tolerances both before and during drilling.
Export structured datasets for further analysis and reporting.

The BHA Trend Analyzer provides insight into how achievable a landing is, and how the BHA is performing compared to expectations.

2.0 Required Inputs

To use the BHA Trend Analyzer, the following inputs are required:

Your organization must have a server database in order to access Vantage and store the data.
The well you wish to analyze must have survey data recorded.
The well must have BHAs created for it. The user does not need to enter data into these BHAs, but a BHA is required to record slide sheet data.
The well must have slide sheet data recorded. Note that only the date, start/end time, start/end depth and state fields are required. Fields like the toolface, motor yield or slide grade are not required.
The well requires a principal plan to be assigned to it.

3.0 Motor Yields

The Motor Yields tab displays an MD/TVD vs. Dogleg Severity (DLS) chart. This helps engineers assess the achievability of the landing by comparing the principal plan with drilling performance data from their well and offset wells.

The results chart can be exported as an image by right-clicking and selecting save image as or copy.

The chart displays the following information:

Purple line – Shows the dogleg vs TVD of the principal plan.

Blue dashed line– Shows the TVD of the last recorded survey. This line will be annotated with the MD, inclination and azimuth of the survey.

Pink dashed line – Shows the TVD of the bit projection, taken from the last recorded slide sheet entry. Not that if the last survey is deeper than the last slide sheet entry, this will not display. The inclination and azimuth are calculated using the In Use value in the Motor Yields section.

Green dashed line– Shows the TVD of the landing point. This is taken from the Landing section in the menu ribbon above the chart. Note that this will not display if the last survey is deeper than the landing point.

Red Line – This is drawn between the bit projection and the landing point, and shows the average dogleg that the driller must achieve to hit the desired inclination and azimuth by the time they reach the landing TVD.

Red Box –Displays the tolerance window for the required landing dogleg. The tolerance window is defined in the Landing Tolerance section of the menu ribbon.

In addition to the lines defined above, the chart also displays the following data points for the currently selected well, as well as any selected offsets. All data points for a well can be toggled off by clicking on the well’s name in the Legend in the top right of the chart. Hovering over a data point will display additional information:

Circles – Dogleg Severity (DLS)

Squares – Build Rates (BR)

Triangles – Turn Rates (TR)

Diamonds – Motor Yields

The ribbon menu at the top of the page provides options to modify the results chart.

The ribbon menu contains the following functions.

Refresh – If the input data for the chart has been updated, click on this function to refresh the chart

Export – Exports the motor yield results data to Excel.

3.1.1 Data

Users can toggle which parameters to display on the chart for the reference well and offsets:

Motor Yields
Dogleg Severity (DLS)
Turn Rates (TR)
Build Rates (BR)

3.1.2 Options

Users can select additional display options using checkboxes. These include:

Formations – Shows formation tops in the chart.
Use Effective TR – Replaces Turn Rate with Effective Turn Rate (calculated as TR × sin(Inc)).
Normalize Yields – Smooth the motor yield data points by interpolating every 30m/100ft.
Plan – Displays the principal plan on the chart.
Legend – Shows the chart legend in the top right of the chart.

All of these can be enabled or disabled by toggling the associated checkboxes.

3.1.3 Filter

The Filters section allows the user to display only the desired range of DLS and Slide % results, and can be used to filter out outlying data points. Adjust the sliders to set the minimum and maximum value of each range.

The Filters section also includes dropdown menus for Phase, Hole Size, and Formation allow filtering based on reference well parameters. Selecting an option from any of these dropdowns automatically zooms in on the corresponding depth range.

Note: Only one of these dropdown filters can be applied at a time.

3.1.4 Axis

The Axis section allows the user to adjust the size of the X and Y axis, by entering values into the respective Min and Max boxes. Clicking the curved arrow icon will reset the zoom to the default view. Note: The Y-axis can also be adjusted by scrolling the mouse wheel to zoom, and left click dragging to pan up and down.

Use the Y-Axis dropdown to toggle the Y-Axis between MD and TVD.

Landing

Users can adjust the desired landing point by entering new TVD, Azimuth, and Inclination values. The DLS value will automatically update to reflect the new landing configuration.

Alternatively, the user can select Auto Landing to automatically pick the landing point. The Trend Analyzer does this by finding the highest inclination in your principal plan. It will then find the shallowest point where the highest inclination occurs, and use the TVD, inclination and azimuth of that point as the landing.

Landing Tolerance

Landing tolerance allows the user to define an acceptable window around the required DLS to hit the landing point. Enter the tolerance above (high) or below (low) in TVD, and the DLS window will be automatically calculated. This also adjusts the size of the red box on the results chart.

3.1.7 Offsets

The Offsets section allows the user to add motor yield, dogleg, turn rate and build rate data from offset wells to the results chart. This gives the driller an idea of the performance they can expect to achieve during drilling.

Enter a distance (in Miles or Km depending on your unit set) into the Radius field. This will populate the dropdown box with offset wells within that radius. The wells can be filtered further by clicking on the icon. This allows the list to be filtered by hole size, assembly type and formation.

Select the wells in the list to display them on the results chart. The number of selected offsets will be displayed below the dropdown.

3.1.8 Motor Yields

The Motor Yields section allows the user to define the current achievable motor yield. This value is used to define the inclination and azimuth in the bit projection on the chart. Note: You may need to scroll the menu to the right to see this section.

It has 3 non-editable fields:

Last Yield – Shows the most recent motor yield calculated from the surveys and slide sheet.
3 Jnt Avg - Shows the 3 joint average motor yield.
4 Jnt Avg - Shows the 4 joint average motor yield.

The In Use value shows the motor yield value currently being used in the results chart. It defaults to the 3 jnt avg motor yield. It can be edited by the user or set back to default by clicking in the curved arrow.

4.0 Rotary Trends

The Rotary Trends tab runs the same data as the Motor Yields tab to visualize Build Rates (BR) and Turn Rates (TR) for the reference well and any selected offsets. This view enables engineers to identify build and turn tendency in their BHA during rotary drilling.

Note: It is recommended that the Slide % be set close to zero, to eliminate sliding sections that will contain deliberate turn and build.

4.1 Rotary Trends Chart

The rotary trends chart plots all of the surveys in the selected well by build rate and turn rate. Offset data can be added to the chart using the Offsets section in the menu ribbon. Individual wells can be hidden from the results by left clicking on their name in the legend in the top right of the chart.

The chart is divided into four quadrants:

Quadrant I: Build & Turn Right
Quadrant II: Build & Turn Left
Quadrant III: Drop & Turn Left
Quadrant IV: Drop & Turn Right

Average values for each quadrant are displayed in the results grid below the chart.

4.2 Rotary Trends Results Grid

The rotary trends results grid is displayed below the chart. If no points on the chart are selected, the results grid will show the average values of all of the results displayed in each of the four quadrants. The Hold Point row displays the average values of all of the results that lie within the designated build rate and turn rate thresholds. These thresholds can be changed in the Hold Point section of the menu ribbon.

The user can select specific points on the chart by left clicking and dragging a box around them. In this case, the results grid will change to show the minimum, maximum and average value for the selected data points. The Data section of the menu ribbon will also display the number of selected points.

The results grid can be exported to Excel format by right clicking on it and selecting Export.

The ribbon menu at the top of the page provides options to modify the results chart.

Refresh Data – If the input data for the chart has been updated, click on this function to refresh the chart.

4.3.1 Zoom

Show All Data –Zooms the chart out to display all data points.

Reset Zoom –The chart can bee zoomed in or out by scrolling the mouse wheel. Clicking on ‘Reset Zoom’ will reset the zoom to default.

4.3.2 Data

Users can select additional display options using checkboxes. These include:

Legend – Shows the chart legend in the top right of the chart.
Use Effective TR – Converts Turn Rate to Effective Turn Rate (calculated as TR × sin(Inc)).
Normalize Yields – Smooth the motor yield data points by interpolating every 30m/100ft.

The Displayed counter shows how many points are currently displayed on the chart and the Selected and how many points have been selected. Select points by left clicking and dragging a box around the points on the chart.

4.3.3 Filters

The Filters section allows the user to display only the desired range of Depth and Slide % results, and can be used to filter out outlying data points. Adjust the sliders to set the minimum and maximum value of each range.

Note: It is recommended that the Slide % be set close to zero, so that the chart and grid only displays results for rotary sections.

4.3.4 Offsets