Mission

The primary aim of this group is to produce and maintain standards for the industry relating to wellbore survey accuracy; to set standards for terminology and accuracy specifications; to establish a standard framework for modelling and validation of tool performance; and to raise awareness and understanding of wellbore survey accuracy issues across the industry.

The Industry Steering Committee on Wellbore Survey Accuracy

The ISCWSA work has resulted in the publication of technical papers, leading technical work shops, multiple SPE “Hits and Misses” workshops, the Wellbore Positioning and Well intercept e-books, collision-avoidance, (anti-collision) papers and API project. We have comprehensive cross-industry, international representation with regular attendance from a wide variety of service companies, operators, and consultants, academia and software companies.

The Industry Steering Committee on Wellbore Survey Accuracy was founded to dispel the confusion and secrecy commonly associated with wellbore surveying. And to enable the industry to produce consistent, reliable estimates of survey-tool performance in today's wells. We achieve these goals through the production and maintenance of standards covering the construction and validation of tool error models.

Work focused initially on Measurement While Drilling systems. They provide a large proportion of the total directional survey data world-wide and, because of their similarities between suppliers, are more amenable to specification standardisation than other types of survey tools.

There is no formal membership enrollment to join the ISCWSA and ISCWSA meetings are open to all who wish to attend. The committee was formed in 1999 and generally holds twice yearly meetings and has held over 57 meetings internationally to date. The ISCWSA is also affiliated with the Society of Petroleum Engineers, as the SPE Wellbore Positioning Technical Section.