SPE Technical Happy Hour: March 2026

Sponsor: Liberty Energy

Study Group Category: Drilling

Speaker: Marc Willerth, Technology Development Manager, Helmerich & Payne

Title: Getting the Most From Your Last Mile

Abstract:

In recent years, the pace and complexity of North American drilling has been rapidly
accelerating. Four-mile step-outs and 180-degree U-turns are quickly becoming the “new
normal”, along with the expectation of delivering drilling speeds of 7000ft/day or more. Lurking
in the background is the influence of the strongest magnetic storms in over 2 decades
disturbing the survey tools that are used to steer these wells.
This presentation looks at some of the growing challenges with wellbore placement for novel
well designs such as how lateral spacing uncertainty grows when typical drilling and surveying
practices are applied to extremely long laterals or horseshoe wells, and how pace of drilling can
exacerbate the potential impact of magnetic storms. The relative value of enhanced positional
accuracy is considered, estimating the increasing lost potential production from each lateral
mile due to the uncertainty in wellbore placement. It will also discuss how spacing uncertainty
trends differ when drilling U-turn wells compared to traditional in-fill drilling campaigns, along
with a discussion of how to properly manage anti-collision for U-turn wells.

Bio:

Marc is a Technology Development Manager at Helmerich & Payne, overseeing a research team
working on wellbore positioning, drilling simulation, condition-based maintenance, and
integrated drilling-geology solutions. He joined H&P in 2017 as part of the MagVAR acquisition
and prior to that has worked for Scientific Drilling and SLB. He has co-authored over 25
publications in OnePetro and several patents primarily in the drilling, geology, and wellbore
placement spaces. Marc is an active member of SPE, currently serving on the JPT editorial

review board as well as being the Error Model chair for the SPE Wellbore Positioning Technical
Section (also known as the ISCWSA). He holds a bachelor’s degrees in Chemistry and Chemical