Digital Energy Journal- Analysing drilling performance

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Analysing drilling performance

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Getting manageable data to feed business processes and for analysis of drilling performance, from Daily Drilling Reports, is a time consuming process. Harry Verkuil, working with Petrofac Integrated Energy Services (IES), in conjunction with Independent Data Services (IDS) explained how Petrofac does it

Petrofac identified the requirement for a 'global standardisation' of its Daily Drilling Reporting system to enable extraction of data to feed business processes and to facilitate improved and more detailed than previously available analysis and benchmarking of their drilling performance. One of the key objectives of this initiative was also to improve the efficiency of the data feed and analysis, said Harry Verkuil, at the Digital Energy Journal February 2014 conference in Aberdeen, 'doing more with drilling data.'

One of the key challenges has been the specific requirement of the different customers both internal and external, differences in key performance indicators, data requirements, varying formats and languages.

Mr Verkuil's background is with Shell where he worked for 25 years, in well engineering, contracts and finance. He started as trainee driller and working his way up to drilling manager. During the latter part of his career he started up operations in Pakistan, India and Saudi Arabia.

In 2008 he left Shell to join for Regal Petroleum as Chief Operations Officer and joined SPD Petrofac in Aberdeen in 2011, after Regal Petroleum's acquisition.

Petrofac IES has operations around the word in Mexico, Malaysia, Tunisia, Romania, Kazakhstan, Nigeria and Cameroon, he said.

Drilling engineers can spend over half of their time on basic well data analysis, with calculators and spreadsheets, he said. 'I want to get rid of that. Their time is better and more cost effective spent on core business.'

One challenge with performance measurement is the different ways which people define events. A typical example is non-productive time.

'An ideal well for me is when you drill each section of a well in one bit trip, without any problems and can pull straight out of hole,' he said. 'Nine times out of ten it doesn't happen.'

All time spent on operations like back reaming and check trips can be seen is a form of non-productive or lost time.

'Through the use of specific defined operations, phases and activities, with their specific work breakdown structure and coding, in combination with fixed and free data fields, we have created a system whereby analysis of the data is greatly improved,' he said. ' This also facilitates a more reliable data feed into other business processes.'

Three tiers

Mr Verkuil sees drilling performance information in three tiers.

Tier 1, is the high level industry drilling performance benchmark data
Tier 2, is the more detailed data derived from the Daily Drilling Reports
Tier 3, is time motion data (data directly available from rig sensors).

A typical order of performance review is from tier 1 drilling down to 2 and 3 if required with increased granularity of the data.

Tier 3, time motion data, is the most accurate and is can clearly show patterns and consistency.

'By getting people working more consistently, you can save yourself an enormous amount of time,' he said.

There is a significant amount of other data generated, such as data from service companies, LWD (logging while drilling), mud logging data, geology reports, cementing data, pressure tests data,' he said. 'It is not being centrally collated.'

Ideal system

'Basically what you are looking for is a system which is completely flexible, where you have all data at hand and provides KPIs and statistics required to carry out a performance review and gap analysis,' he said.

In addition, it should be able to feed different business processes and provide automated reporting.

'You have your weekly reports, monthly reports, your presentation to the board or the head of drilling. The data is there, however it should be available at your fingertips with one touch of a button.'

There should be no need to rework the data and it should come in a presentable format.

'A drilling fluid engineer has different data interests to someone who evaluates bit performance,' he said.

Since different users have different interests, the system users should be able to set up their individual dashboards displaying the information and data they need, in the way and format they like.

The system data should be aligned and used to feed specific business processes.

For example Petrofac has a well Engineering Management System, called 'WellAtlas', where a feed of performance data and KPIs is used throughout the Project Delivery Process, he said.

Also, the global industry benchmarking data is now automatically generated from the Daily Drilling Reports. 'A year ago the [benchmarking data systems] were not speaking to each other, today they are,' he said.

It is not only drilling data which can be extracted. With the system set up as a centralised data base, it can also easily extract data such as global casing usage, total global rig days, global drilling fluid expenditure, or global reported non-productive time.

The development and improvements being made to the reporting system is a joint effort between Petrofac IES, providing well engineering expertise and Independent Data Services (IDS) for the development of the software.

You can download Mr Verkuil's presentation at
http://www.digitalenergyjournal.com/event/123as.aspx

Associated Companies
» Petrofac

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