Digitalization of Detailed Drilling Operation Plans and Verification of Automatic Progress Tracking with an Online Drilling Simulator Environment
A structured, machine-readable drilling procedure that enables fully automated progress tracking, verified against an online drilling simulator — with NORCE and Equinor.
SPE-199666-MS — IADC/SPE International Drilling Conference and Exhibition, Galveston, Texas, USA, March 3, 2020
Pourya Farmanbar (Exebenus); Olav Revheim (Exebenus); Anne Siw Uberg (Exebenus); Alexander Chekushev (Exebenus); Eric Cayeux (NORCE Norwegian Research Centre); Jan Einar Gravdal (NORCE Norwegian Research Centre); Espen Hauge (Equinor)
DOI: 10.2118/199666-MS
Abstract
In the age of digitalization and automatization of drilling operations, it is time to move the detailed drilling operating procedure from its classical text format, only intended for human interpretation, to a structured representation that can be utilized efficiently by computer systems. The immediate benefit of this transformation is that progress tracking during an operation can be fully automated. To verify that automatic progress tracking can be performed with a digital version of the detailed operating procedure, simulated operations have been fed to the digital procedure and activity recognition software. The matching quality is thereafter assessed for each step of the planned drilling and non-drilling operating procedure. The detailed digital operating procedure itself is automatically generated from general descriptions contained in the operation program like tubular strings and fluids, and operational limits. The testing procedure utilized five operations generated on the fly by a simulator: running in hole and tagging bottom, setting liner hanger and releasing running tool, pull out of hole, spacing out a completion seal assembly in a liner top and setting and testing a production packer. The simulated operations were inspired by actual operations recorded in a real-time data server.
