Halliburton Project Management’s innovative approach to drilling optimization resulted in a new field record
Download PDFHalliburton Project Management’s innovative approach to drilling optimization resulted in a new field record in Oman, in part by utilizing Pason System’s automation solutions, realtime drilling optimization, and high-quality data for enhancing well construction rates.
As a global leader in the management and delivery of lump-sum turnkey (LSTK) projects, the Halliburton Project Management (HPM) team deploys a suite of technologies, engineering services, and industry expertise to deliver wells safely and efficiently. LSTK projects are often outsourced to vertically integrated service companies due to the complexity or size of the drilling program, and Halliburton has been awarded several projects worldwide based on their proven record of meeting or exceeding customer’s expectations.
In Oman, HPM was presented with challenging targets from the NOC, and HPM responded with a structured, targeted strategy for success. Over the first 12 months, HPM’s primary focus was on deploying the proper personnel and services, identifying challenges specific to the drilling field, and reliably identifying and tracking invisible lost time (ILT) and non-productive time (NPT) to better control and reduce off-bottom time. The second phase was to explore improvements in on-bottom performance and Rate of Penetration (ROP) using new technologies and collaborations with other industry leading specialists.
This paper describes the challenges and step-bystep chronology of solutions deployed to achieve continuous performance improvement and merits of integration amongst Halliburton and Pason for maximizing drilling performance. By effectively focusing on process execution, the project team was able to achieve field records for best composite time for oil-producing wells and for water-injector wells.
After working in Northern Oman for approximately 9 months, HPM drilling teams struggled to find a consistent and repeatable roadmap for significant ROP improvements.
During the initial +9 months, the drilling teams were relying on the driller to manually control ROP, weight-on-bit (WOB), differential pressure, pump pressure, and torque. Regardless of the driller’s experience, it is difficult for a single person to successfully monitor and adjust for multiple, continuously changing variables in real-time. The results were unpredictable variations in ROP, WOB and drilling processes that could not be repeated from well to well. Although the drilling plan was sound, the team was unable to achieve significant improvements in ROP due to the extreme variation and lack of control.
To help solve this problem, the HPM team tasked Pason Systems to first augment the rig’s existing Electronic Drilling Recorder (EDR) and sensor set installation to improve data quality and real-time visibility, and second to integrate the Pason AutoDriller and DAS technologies into the rig’s existing programmable logic control (PLC) system.
The initial objectives of the trial were to:
Variation reduction is critical for the following reasons:
It is common for customers to focus solely on ROP improvements as their measure of Return on Investment (ROI). ROP is easy to quantify and quick to compare from well to well. However, there are several other areas where cost savings and significant drilling improvements can be achieved; they are simply more difficult to measure and for this reason are often ignored.
We noticed that in previous projects with other 3rd party sensors, data quality was sub-optimal. We were looking for a data provider that did not suffer from gaps or issues with data quality.
One specific area to be highlighted is the improvement in connection times following the deployment of the Pason system, as this significant cost savings was not expected.
Before the first well was completed, the company man was already commenting that the tripping out performance had improved. Post-well analysis of the data proved what the rig crew had observed: removing the driller and replacing him with the DAS system resulted in 10% to 20% faster breakout connections. The consistent, controlled application of WOB reduced the occurrence of overtorque along the drillstring. This alone saved 108 minutes.
* NOTE - Similar results were achieved on another Pason trial in Oman, where the Customer recognized a total reduction of over 1,000 minutes in connection times alone.
Led by the HPM team, Halliburton and Pason worked together in Oman to achieve a significant contribution to ROI using automation, high-quality data, and a proven planning process to create a blueprint for success.
During the trials, consistent and repeatable success was achieved. The Pason multi-parameter AutoDriller operated off Halliburton’s roadmap that included targets and limits for ROP, WOB, differential pressure, and torque. The AutoDriller automatically adjusted the active control state according to the roadmap targets and limits. Realtime optimization through automation helped to further quantify and visualize the limiters. The limiters could then be safely pushed higher. These new limits were used to remodel the drilling plan that would ultimately achieve success in ROP optimization. Successful deployment of the AutoDriller system assisted in improving the on-bottom ROP of Rig 1 by an average of 9.2% and of Rig 2 by an average of 11.9%.
Halliburton achieved significant ROP optimization by integrating Pason’s unique automation technology with their innovative drilling optimization process. They will continue to create value for their customers using this record-breaking approach.
