Traditionally, many companies have preferred to let others take perceived risks first, but that mentality is changing. New technology, including automation, is becoming widespread, implemented by more and more brand-name companies globally. New ideas and applications are significantly improving efficiencies while reducing costs, as old ideas about drilling operations are rapidly disintegrating.

A dual look at this changing mindset focusing on innovation and automation and mechanization illustrates this point.

Efficiency always matters

All data feed into a centralized support center, where information is reviewed by appropriate experts periodically to ensure that all operations are being handled properly at each drill site.

In today’s worldwide economic downturn, operators want to drill wells even more efficiently. Everyone wants a competitive edge, and technology is usually the driving force.

One example illustrates how engineers are already turning remote drilling centers into reality. Picture a company drilling a dozen wells. Rather than having service company and operator personnel with varying degrees of skill and experience at each well, a remote drilling center is staffed with specialists who deal with typically encountered drilling problems.

All data feed into this centralized

support center, where information is reviewed by appropriate experts periodically to ensure that all operations are being handled properly at each drill site. At a desktop terminal they may receive certain types of data for which they can set alarm limits per job or per hole section.

For example, drilling parameters and performance can be evaluated in near real-time, and wellbore trajectories can be altered to mitigate instability problems or to connect to new production targets. By effectively becoming part of the drilling team, these technical specialists are already “up to speed” when any problem occurs because all are at a central site and not dispersed at different wells.

Centers such as these are ideal for companies with geographically far-flung drilling operations taking place under very harsh and dangerous conditions. By consolidating experienced technical personnel into one optimal protected environment, which could be in a major city, people in the remote areas can effectively manage risks and reduce exposure unnecessarily to hazards.

Additionally, companies have the flexibility to use centers through different business arrangements. Sometimes operators opt to benefit the oil company itself by locating the center within a company office. Others opt for a facility that houses multiple, smaller operators. In any event, the centers are affordable for most oil companies and allow them to monitor various drilling parameters at a single, consolidated location. Professionals based in the center may even be doing the actual directional control work by remotely steering downhole tools.

For offshore operations, a center’s efficiencies are especially beneficial, saving helicopter and bed space along with catering charges in addition to technicians’ service rates. When a technician is required, often a less experienced and less expensive person can be sent to the rig while the experienced office-based directional drilling hand oversees multiple wells.

Well manufacturing

The first steps involve mechanization — developing a machine that, for example, lifts more or reaches further than one person can handle. Next, control algorithms need to be developed that let the tool make some of its own decisions, leading to automation.

The advent of new drilling models, such as work recently produced by a Russian mathematician who uses fractal analysis and other highly complex mathematical criteria, will greatly aid the decision processes. Companies in the US, UK, and Norway also are working on drilling models. One Norwegian company has developed models providing envelope protection so a driller does not exceed a limit that could impact a wellbore’s integrity. Some firms are starting to combine multiple models operating simultaneously, which present critical challenges to the control system manufacturers.

Historically, automation has been more easily accepted in downstream operations where pipelines, chambers, fluids, and contaminants are more homogenous than the complexities of a well bore. However, more accurate surface and downhole measurements added to the advanced drilling models have shown that parts of the drilling process are more predictable and more applicable for automated process controls. This can lead to “well manufacturing,” essentially taking the drilling operation and seeing how to make it a standard, repeatable process rig-to-rig, formation-to-formation, and geography-to-geography.

When companies are drilling large numbers of wells, costs can be reduced dramatically through well manufacturing as rig designs and control systems are being designed to optimize the drilling processes.

As a result, NOV and NOV M/D Totco are building drilling operations appropriate for the “manufacturing” of wells.

Included within this environment are various new developments:

• Cruise control – auto drill or the mechanization whereby the driller sets up the machine and it drills automatically. The driller sets the parameter(s), and the machine ensures that those parameters are followed. Several elements are controlled simultaneously, including rate of penetration, weight on bit, torque, and differential pressure.

• Remote control – where technical experts in the support centers, which could be on a rig or in an office, review data and communicate instructions to the rig by phone, e-mail, or fax, and now by direct control. A current project in the arctic regions of northern Norway is investigating how to safely drill where conditions are dark, frigid, dangerous, and expensive. Siberia is another region where remote operations and maximum automation would be quite effective.

• Downlink control – existing rig control systems (originally introduced as DrillLink) can be augmented with a simple, low-cost option to automate downlinking to rotary steerables and other “smart tools” in the bottomhole assembly. DrillLink works with analog throttle signals. Newer rigs have programmable logic controllers (PLCs) that communicate digitally from joysticks or touch screens from the drillfloor. Today’s CyberLink, with the same functionality as DrillLink, was developed for digital rigs. The first CyberLink job will be on offshore rigs with Cyberbase control systems. It will soon be on Amphion-controlled rigs manufactured by NOV in Houston.

The future

Inevitably, the industry is moving toward the highest degree of automation possible within the drilling process. Still, automation development and implementation are gradual, not swift, essentially getting closer to “full” automation on a part-by-part basis. Machines emerge that enhance human capabilities, and controls are continually improved to mechanize and streamline processes. Eventually, controls evolve into automation for smoother, more efficient, and more cost-effective solutions.

Yet, through a company anecdote, consider what sweeping change has already been accomplished by looking ahead rather than accepting the status quo. Ten years ago, a European drilling contractor wanted a control system — “to improve our processes and protect our people” — that instructed the user to type in the hole depth, then push the “trip button” and watch as the bit automatically tripped to bottom. Hardware to perform this operation existed at the time, and a model to automate the process was outlined, but many unknowns killed the project.

Controls continue to evolve, and today the industry is on the verge of tripping within cased hole and eventually tripping within certain formations subject to acceptable risks. As the evolution continues, it will require the same kind of visionary companies that see the value to push the industry beyond the status quo. As that happens, even more sophisticated mechanization and automation will be developed for field application in demanding drilling environments.