A DRILLING SYSTEM WITH AN ACOUSTIC MEASUREMENT-WHILE-DRILLING SYSTEM FOR DETERMINING PARAMETERS OF INTEREST AND CONTROLLING THE DRILLING DIRECTION

摘要

The present invention provides a system (10) for drilling bore-holes (26) having a downhole subassembly (59) which contains an acoustic measurement-while-drilling system. The acoustic system contains an acoustic transmitter (T1) and receiver (R) for determining the accustic velocity through the formations surrounding the borehole ad an acoustic transmitter (T2) and a set of receivers (R1-Rn) for determining the bed boundaries surrounding the borehole formation utilizing the acoustic velocities measured by the system. The downhole subassembly (59) also contains a computing system (150) which performs computations downhole and transmits certain answers uphole during the drilling operations. The bed boundary information is utilized to drill the wellbore along a desired wellbore path. The downhole computing system (150) correlates the acoustic sensor measurements with other measurement-while-drilling measurements and transmits selected correlated information uphole. The downhole computing system (150) contains predetermined well profile which is updated based on the bed boundary information. The system may be adapted to correct or update seismic data and offset well data based on acoustic sensor system measurements.