Posted 18.10.2017 13:14 by Magnus Tvedt
How plans, risks, calculations and documentation seemlessly integrate
If You Have Done It Twice, You Better Digitalize.(Rhyme intended)
Digitalization is on everyone CEO's tongue in the Drilling and Well industry. Service companies wonder how they will show their best tools to the digital well planner. Rig owners wonder how they will match the performance seen in other manufacturing industries. Oil Companies wonder how much cost they can cut from their field development projects. But how do you prepare for the Digital Oilfield, and what is a digital well plan?
Traditionally, we have been making governing documents for people to read. Page up and page down with experience transfer, built on years of best practices, from studying, trying and failing. With the immense amounts of experience logged in governing documents, the challenge for the well planner is to prioritize where to dig deep, and where to go light in the rules and regulations.
Governing documents are for people to followSometimes they do
With digital well planning, we make algorithms and rules for computers to follow. And the case is flipped upside down. No longer are the ruls ment as guidance for the well planner to read, they are written to control the well planning. When you make a rule, it will be followed, computers are nice that way.
Algorithms are for computers to followThey always do
A Digital Well Plan is made automatically when a dataset is applied. The dataset consists of all available data for the well, and the computer runs through all relevant algorithms to make plans, risk matrices, schematics, barrier diagrams and decision reports
When data change (and they do all the time), the model updates continuously, and gives a transparent overview of the well plan. As long as there is an algorithm, the result is updated. Cost estimates, detailed operational procedures, section depths are all live updated when a change occurs
This have been a long accepted truth on the drill floor, and it is valid. Drilling and well operations are complex, and the cost of failure by far overruns the cost of people in the decision loop
But with digital operations, you move the well planners into a quiet room, and you write out algorithms for operations you know or expect to occur. In a calm, open environment, you ensure transparent decisions based on clear parameters
The computer can take in enormous datasets and map all of the data points to a decision matrix, so when changes occur during drilling or planning, you will always get the full picture.
Have no fear of running out of tasks? There are so many engineering tasks that have been put on hold, as management have focused more on reporting and compliancy.Remember that trip risk log you couldn't figure out why the drilling was challenging? - work on it. You think you can do more operations in parallell? - write algorithms and visualize better. What does it mean to have more sensors in the drill string? - develop a model and implement the algorithms in the process
As a pioneering industry, we are mature, but as a digital industry, we have barely begun