Lecture Title: Recommended Practice for Safe Well Positioning, Separation, and Surveying
Lecturer’s Name: Jonathan Dale Lightfoot
Cost: $30 at the door.
Abstract: Ensuring accurate wellbore placement and safe construction is crucial in all subsurface borehole applications. To this end, the American Petroleum Institute (API) has developed a new technical standard titled API Recommended Practice 78, Wellbore Surveying and Positioning (RP 78) which covers a wide range of industries including oil and gas, geothermal, carbon sequestration, coalbed methane, horizontal directional drilling, mineral ventilation, and scientific coring. The standard was created by independent consultants, industry experts, academia, and public and private energy operators with the goal of providing modern engineering practices for subsurface boring industries. The Operator's Wellbore Survey Group (OWSG), a sub-committee of the Industry Steering Committee on Wellbore Survey Accuracy (ISCWSA), initiated the development of API RP 78 to address the lack of minimum industry-wide standards for safe wellbore positioning and separation from sub-surface hazards. The ISCWSA is equivalent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Wellbore Positioning Technical Section. API RP 78 is available through API's standards development process and aims to improve confidence in wellbore subsurface position and reduce uncertainty and will hopefully be embraced by all wellbore construction participants with industry-wide adoption.
Biography:
Jonathan Lightfoot is a Principal and Senior Drilling Engineering Consultant at Oxy. His
primary role at Oxy is to support global drilling operations as a Directional Drilling Specialist.
He has 26 years of oil and gas industry experience specializing in wellbore positioning and
directional drilling. Lightfoot chairs the Operator’s Wellbore Survey Group (OWSG), a
subcommittee of the SPE Wellbore Positioning Technical Section (WPTS), and is the vice-chair of the API RP 78 Task Group developing its Recommended Practice for Surveying and
Wellbore Positioning. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the
University of Louisiana at Lafayette.