The advent of frontier production, particularly in deepwater environments, has fostered engineering challenges well beyond previous design environments. Batch drilling, in combination with high spread rates, dictates that well failures be kept to a minimum. This goal is reinforced by the extreme consequences of a hydrocarbon release at the mudline.

Technology development has responded to this new design environment. High-temperature well designs have been accomplished with the aid of pressure relief mechanisms to mitigate annular pressure build-up. Multiple casing seats have been accommodated with expandable tubulars and special casing sizes. Extreme loads have been answered with new developments in running strings and slip design.

The entire design process has benefited from being formulated in a probabilistic framework. This approach, of course, implies the collection of statistical data, a need answered by the introduction of near-continuous geometry mapping.

This presentation reviews the context, success, and developmental failures of a variety of recently introduced design advances, using specific well examples to reinforce key points.