From a service company perspective how does the oil and gas industry address the challenges in the industry around planning, technology development, and service delivery? The industry is addressing these challenges today through collaboration, beginning with planning and through technology development, the execution phase of service delivery, and service quality.

With today’s trends and tomorrow’s reality, Weatherford set the stage around drilling reliability, well integrity, and understanding that the industry is drilling in a challenging environment during a panel discussion by Weather-ford experts at the Society of Petroleum Engineers and International Association of Drilling Contractors Drilling Conference in Amsterdam March 6. Experts spoke about where the industry was headed in understanding challenging environments.

Panel members were Tom Tilton, vice president of research and engineering and chief technology officer; Pat York, director of well engineering and project management, global; and Brent Emerson, vice president of well construction products.

Collaboration is critical

Over and over again the panel emphasized how much collaboration will impact all aspects of drilling and completing a well, from geosciences to drilling to fracturing to production. Improving communication and sharing data across all disciplines offers the best access to greater effectiveness.

“From the well engineering side we’ve been collaborating with service companies, operators, and drilling contractors. When we start looking at the wells that are really hard and complex – and we are seeing more and more of those – we have been working with the operators to form part of their team,” York said.

“What we are doing is dissecting the wells from top to bottom. Through that collaboration, the relationship goes from a strictly vendor relationship to a trusted advisory relationship. When that starts to happen, that is collaboration,” he continued. “By bringing a global perspective to it, operators and drilling contractors bring local knowledge to the collaboration, while we as a service provider can provide an intimate knowledge of certain technologies and how they are most effectively applied. In working together, we are able to solve problems and eliminate nonproductive time [NPT].”

Tilton agreed, pointing out that a critical part of the development process involves clients and service providers in a collaborative effort. One example is the company’s radio frequency identification (RFID) actuation, which was heavily influenced by collaboration with customers. That collaboration is sustained through the development cycle so that the customer points the company in the right direction and helps it to understand where the value of that technology is, he continued.

Collaboration extends throughout the life cycle. It does not end at the development. The critical phase is the commercialization. If the product gets to field trials and brings new technology to bear, it is critical that there is a feedback loop to improve products as they are launched.

Service quality at the well site derives from collaboration with the clients, explained Emerson. That collaboration begins at R&D centers worldwide where products can be taken through planning and technology development before being implemented at the well site.

“Today when you drill a well and run a discrete product, it may have a 98% or 99% success rate, which is really quite phenomenal. However, if you add four or five products or tools into a well and start multiplying out each with a 1% failure rate, then pretty soon you’re at a 95% or 90% success rate, which really is unacceptable,” Emerson said.

Tilton noted that the technology that goes into solving these issues and making the overall operation successful cannot be developed in isolation. A systems approach is needed to develop solutions to overall well challenges.

Technology development

What drives a service company to deliver technologies associated with the challenges, and what will those technologies look like in the future?

The panel noted the main prime driver is the client. Listening to the problems, understanding them, and having a broad conversation around the challenges are foremost. For example, clients told the company what was wanted in a drilling reamer. Taking what was said, Weatherford devised its RFID-actuated Riptide reamer. There was a barrier around ball-drop activated tools, which was broken through.

York described what is needed to go from the well engineering side to actually implementing at the rig site. “We were working with certain clients on difficult hole sections that they were having a hard time delivering. One particular client had drilled eight to 10 wells. They spent [US] $85 million on several and did not get anything out of those wells. One well in fact represented 100% in NPT.

“We looked at drilling two particular hole sections within offsets/reentries to these complex wells in a collaborative environment. We were not just throwing technologies at it. We were using whatever technologies and drilling practices the well was telling us would be most effective in lowering drilling risks and eliminating/avoiding drilling-related NPT. In one hole section there was an unstable formation sitting on top of a formation with losses. It was a reentry well, and we could not just throw casingstrings at it,” he continued.

“Working together we were able to use managed-pressure drilling to drill through that section, match the equivalent circulating densities, and set the casing as we worked with the operator to use wellbore strengthening and managed-pressure drilling techniques to run and cement the string while staying prepared to employ managed-pressure cementing technology in case it was required. We delivered whole sections instead of just throwing technologies on top of it. You can’t do that unless you are working closely together and delivering not only single applications but all the applications for the whole section that is most effective,” he said.

Safety process collaboration

Given the focus on industry operations post-Macondo, the stakeholders must form even wider collaborative efforts. For as long as there has been an oil and gas industry, the drilling contractor and operator were linked closely around safety management systems such as well construction interface documents.

“What we’re seeing now is how all companies work together to bring closer relationships between the people that are doing the individual work, whether it be the mud company, logging company, or managed-pressure drilling company,” York said. “By doing that through a collaborative use of the well construction interface document, they would be looking at all the processes from the helicopter landing all the way through drilling the well itself. With collaboration, working closely together, the process safety can be delivered on anything we do.”