As of this writing, IADC’s World Drilling Conference was wrapping up in Copenhagen, Denmark. Once again, the question of “human-free drilling” took the lead as the conference’s opening session offered views from a number of experts, including Jim Rogers, automation advisor, worldwide drilling, at Apache Corp.

“The production side of the business knows how to apply automation technologies,” Rogers said. “Their knowledge and skills don’t seem to be applied on the drilling side of the business.”

While standards, technology, and incentives are present to bring fully automated workflows into the drilling business, Rogers said, “the tremendous amount of drilling experience prevents the industry from looking around at other segments and other industries to see how drilling can be done better.”

One of the goals for automating the drilling process is to reduce the amount of crew members needed to drill a well. Taking a lesson from the shipping industry, Frederik Smith, chief technical officer, Maersk Drilling, said, “In 1983, the largest container ships in the world contained 6,500 containers with 23 people operating the unit. In 2004, ships could hold more than 15,000 containers with a crew of 20.” At the same time, the Maersk Innovator was drilling with a crew of 44, with 21 crewmembers required as essential to rig operations.

While the drilling industry has incorporated a wide array of automated equipment in the last 20 years, has it really served to drastically reduce crew sizes and pull workers away from the rig? One way to answer this question is to delineate true, multimachine automation from remote operation. “Is remote operation actually automation? No, I don’t think we’ve seen evidence of that,” Smith said.

“What justifies technical innovation?” Smith asked. Primarily, safety, efficiency, and cost are the three drivers. For example, pipe handling was one of the first areas to see the introduction of automation. “In 2000, the Maersk Innovator incorporated pipe handling equipment relying on seven machines with 30 interactions from personnel,” Smith said. At its inception, the company’s Maersk Developer was using 10 machines with 14 interactions.

“Human-free drilling is not realistic,” Smith said. However, the company is actively pursuing the reduction of rig crews through real automation as opposed to remote operation only.

“Next-generation rigs will rely on automation for a number of factors, including safety, reliability, data handling, and ergonomics,” said Sven Ove Aanesland, product line director, control systems, at National Oilwell Varco. Breaking out of the “old ways,” as Aanesland called it, will be important for moving closer to full automation. In the past, machines were designed for manual work and then adapted for automation. “In the future, it will be important to reverse this process and design for automation at the onset,” Aanesland said.

While human-free drilling may be unrealistic, “It provides a great vision for seeing where innovation will take place,” said Nejm Saadallah, research, IRIS.