From Basis of Design to Approved Programme — Without the Gaps
Most well engineering problems are not discovered when the well is designed. They are discovered when the well is drilled — as stuck pipe, well control events, integrity failures or NPT that the post-well review traces back to assumptions that should have been challenged at the design stage.
Superior Performance Design provides well engineering design services that start with a question: what are the realistic worst cases for this well, and does the design account for them? Not the P50 case. The case that will happen to someone, somewhere, on a well like this.
We Design Wells Across the Full Range of Technical Environments
- Deepwater exploration: shallow hazard assessment, HPHT design up to 20,000 psi / 195°C, subsea wellhead specification and qualification
- Onshore development: narrow pore pressure-fracture gradient windows, sour gas (H₂S) NACE sour service, managed pressure drilling (MPD) assessment
- Extended reach drilling (ERD): torque and drag modelling, casing wear prediction, hydraulics optimisation
- Geothermal: high-temperature two-phase service, corrosive brines, lost circulation management strategy
- CO₂ injection and carbon storage: supercritical phase management, carbonic acid corrosion, 50+ year containment design
- Gas storage conversion: cyclic loading fatigue analysis, materials compatibility, wellhead upgrade design
Our Design Process
Every well design SPD delivers goes through a defined peer review structure — concept select, detailed design, and pre-well — with a formal checkpoint before progression to the next stage. We do not deliver a programme and move on. We stand behind the design through execution, with on-site engineering support available throughout.
What Sets SPD’s Design Work Apart
We carry uncertainty explicitly. Where offset data is poor, we do not use a single-point estimate and call it calibrated. We define an uncertainty range, carry it into the casing design as a risk-weighted input, and make sure the operator understands what assumptions they are drilling on.
We think about what the programme does not say. A drilling programme that is silent on a contingency is not a programme with no contingency — it is a programme where the contingency will be improvised under pressure at the rig site. We write programmes that give the well team the guidance they need for the scenarios that are most likely to happen.
We design for the people drilling the well, not just for the document reviewer. Technical depth. Clear decision thresholds. Unambiguous well control response. That is what keeps people safe and wells on track.
Track Record
- Zero well control incidents on our HPHT deepwater programme: 7,100m TVD, 20,000 psi, 195°C
- Zero HSE incidents on a high-temperature geothermal production and reinjection programme
- First deepwater exploration well for an independent operator — safely drilled to TD, all permits secured pre-mobilisation, schedule maintained
- Narrow-margin onshore sour gas well: full NACE compliance matrix, MPD contingency engineered, zero well control incidents on execution