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SPE Denver General Meeting: March 2026
Title: Formation-Informed Performance: Closing the Loop Between Geology, Drilling, and Completions.
Author: Erin Britton, Drilling Solutions Engineering Team Lead, CORVA
Session Overview:
As unconventional development programs mature, optimizing well performance requires tighter integration between geoscience, drilling, and completions teams. Yet zone placement decisions often overlook formation-level variability that directly impacts ROP, MSE, vibration, and overall drilling efficiency. Bridging this gap demands a unified view of subsurface context and real-time performance data.
This presentation introduces a unified geosteering, drilling, and completions solution designed to provide a single source of truth across disciplines. Geo Insights enables teams to identify the optimal “sweet spot” within the drilling window by pairing stratigraphic context with real-time KPIs such as ROP, MSE, vibration, and effective in-zone footage. Teams can remove structural bias, reveal true drilling equivalency, and benchmark performance with confidence. Synchronized views create a collaborative workspace that standardizes best practices and improves cross-functional decision making.
A Canadian operator case study will highlight how integrating geoscience insights directly into drilling workflows accelerated curve-to-lateral execution by approximately 2.75 days versus offsets, delivered ~$300,000 in savings per well, stabilized ROP, reduced MSE, and improved zone placement consistency. By closing the loop with completions data to identify stratigraphic intervals linked to troublesome stages and NPT, Geo Insights enables faster lessons learned and improved reliability across the development program. Attendees will gain practical insight into how integrated geoscience and analytics can drive measurable performance gains and cost savings in modern drilling operations.
Bio:
Erin Britton is the Drilling Solutions Engineering Team Lead and Geoscience SME at Corva, she is based in Denver, Colorado. With a 16-year career spanning drilling engineering, asset management, operations leadership, and consulting, Erin has focused on integrating formation understanding with real-time performance data to reduce NPT, improve zone placement, and standardize best practices across development programs. Prior to Corva, Erin held engineering and leadership roles at Anschutz Exploration Corporation, Sundance Energy, Liberty Resources, Unit, and Ovintiv (Encana)- including Director of Engineering & Operations and Senior Staff Drilling Engineer positions supporting large-scale development and optimization initiatives. Erin earned a B.S. in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Oklahoma and a Master’s in Business & Energy from the University of Tulsa.