Data Series - Digital Drilling Event
With Baker Hughes, eDrilling, Horizon56
Topics:
Baker Hughes, i-Trak
Digital applications for drilling automation; low-CAPEX automated advisory for fixed installations, coupling automated fluids monitoring and digital twins & the world’s first autonomous reservoir well placement system.
The industry sees a trend in E&P and service companies gravitating towards high-spread rate assets to deploy their latest and greatest drilling automation technology. This is natural due to the economics of these assets where NPT and ILT aversion can quickly yield a ROI. This segment will contrast this with the deployment of automated advisory solutions requiring no significant incremental investment in rig site hardware on drilling operations conducted on fixed production platforms. Specific examples of performance improvements through ILT reduction will be shown with equally as significant economic gains.
The journey from the world’s first automated, surface-based algorithmic controller for rotary steerable directional drilling, debuted in 2019 to 2023’s world-first deployment of a autonomous reservoir well placement solution in conjunction with a major operator in the North Sea. The technology takes deep-reading resistivity data acquired downhole, processes and updates a reservoir model, derives optimal sub-surface position, passes this through a real-time well planning and ultimately sends commands to the rotary steerable tool downhole. The challenges of elevating both directional drillers and geo-steerers from system operators to system supervisors.
eDrilling
Drilling digital twin is an up-to-date digital replica of the physical well during the construction process. It is built on digital modeling of the drilling process, consisting of thermal dynamic, hydraulic, and mechanical models. The digital twin updates in real-time using monitored data and facilitates automated monitoring, forward-looking analysis, and predictive insights. Besides, the analysis of digital twins results in advisory feeding back to its physical well. Hence, there is a bi-directional communication bridging the physical well and its digital twin, ensuring that the digital twin is up-to-date, accurately representing the physical well, and proves indispensable for monitoring, supporting, and advising the drilling process. Case studies on multiple wells from different operators are presented, showcasing the capabilities in real-time monitoring, risk detection, and drilling parameter optimization.
Horizon56
Bridging the gap between Well planning and execution
In offshore drilling operations today, sharing of well program information between operators and drilling contractors remains a manual, paper-based process. This generally gives sub-optimal communication flows between the involved parties, leading to reliance on verbal communication, low visibility on current operational status and difficult to ensure all parties are aligned on latest version of plan.
This presentation will introduce new ways of working that leverage the latest digital solutions to improve information workflows between operators and drilling contracts, bridging the gap between well planning and execution.
Speakers and Bios:
Jie Cao, Chief Technology Officer | eDrilling AS, Stavanger, Norway
Jie currently works at eDrilling as the Chief Technology Officer. He is now mainly responsible for the technology and R&D toward the new generation of drilling digitalization and automation. He is a passionate technologist focusing on applying state-of-the-art AI and digital twin technologies to promote safer, faster, and easier drilling for subsurface resource exploration and exploitation, including Oil and Gas, Carbon storage, and Geothermal. Before joining eDrilling, Jie worked in academia in various positions. He was awarded various R&D projects funded by governments and industries and promoted applied research of AI in drilling engineering, mainly on digitalization, automation, and machine learning applications. He has published over 30 peer-reviewed papers and conference proceedings and granted 3 patents. He received his Ph.D. in Oil and Gas Engineering from Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada in 2017. With a background in modeling and machine learning, Jie works on converting the accumulated research results to novel solutions in the industry toward efficient energy solutions and carbon neutrality. He was awarded SPE Young Engineer of the Year in 2023 by the SPE Stavanger Section.
Asbjørn Sola, Chief Commercial Officer (CCO), Horizon56
He has extensive management experience from several industries including the oil and gas industry. Over the last 25years Asbjørn has worked within finance, technology, sales and marketing with an entrepreneurial focus and has held senior positions including country manager of the B2B marketplace IBX, CFO of Sense Intellifield (developed Sitecom), and in 2011 he was one of the founders of Sekal. Asbjørn holds a MSc as a Software Engineer from the University of Stavanger and an MBA from Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh.
Glen Houghton, Digital Lead, Drilling Services, Europe, Baker Hughes
Started with Baker Hughes as MWD working offshore in 2006. Have since held positions within remote operations, personnel management and project management working on re-manning and remote operations service models and IO levels, before starting in the digital realm a couple of years ago.