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IADC-News from the exhibition floor

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Drillers are making much faster adjustments to drilling with better information generated downhole - some of the exciting new digital technology for drilling presented at the IADC drilling event in Amsterdam

In order to drill as safely and effectively as possible, it is important to have as clear an idea as possible about what is happening at the drill bit.
A new range of tools and services is being developed to help drillers get a much better understanding - using data generated from tools located very close to the drill bit.

NOV- more data from downhole

National Oilwell Varco (NOV) has downhole tools which can measure the weight on bit from data actually gathered close to the drill bit, including readings of pressure, bore pressure and torque.

To help drillers do more with this data, it has launched the "Well site Performance Drilling Advisor" software tool, which can calculate your mechanical specific energy data every second.

Mechanical Specific Energy indicates the amount of effort that is put into drilling, taking into account four different factors - the revolutions per minute (RPM), the weight on bit (WOB), the torque, and the rate of penetration.

NOV also offers Drill Shark which is a drilling supervisory and automation control software application. The system is developed by a team of engineers who visit the well and calculate the optimum amount of mechanical specific energy required for the best drilling performance, using a range of different algorithms. So you can see how close your mechanical specific energy is to the optimum.

NOV also has a special interface with control systems, which can automatically make adjustments to the drilling equipment at the surface, including to weight on bit and rate of penetration, to achieve the optimum mechanical specific energy.

One basic aim of all of this is to make the adjustment of downhole weight on bit more of a science and less of a guess, says Daan Veeningen, iTools Product Line Manager with NOV.

The services are supported by NOV's 'wired drill pipe technology,' which enables data to be communicated through the drill pipe, rather than by mud pulse, as it is traditionally done.

This technology enables much more data to be sent, at faster speeds, so faster adjustments can be made at the surface to changing downhole conditions.
'With the networked drill string -much more data is available,' Mr Veeningen says. 'The networked drill string provides downhole information independent from surface data.'

For example, this can enable much faster responses to a kick (a sudden flow of oil and gas into the well, which can be very dangerous).

Kick detection has traditionally been done by taking readings at the surface (looking for an increase in pressure of mud coming upwards).

By having sensors all the way up the drill string, it will give you faster advice about the type of kick.

NOV believes that there could be business opportunities for other companies to come up with systems which can make use of the wired drill pipe.

Computer models of control systems

Marine Cybernetics of Trondheim, Norway, is helping improve the reliability of offshore control systems - by building a computer model of the control system then subjecting it to exhaustive testing of every different scenario it might find itself in.

The company has worked with a major manufacturer of blow out preventers (BOPs), building a computer model which simulates all of the hardware and control systems on the blow out preventer.

This control system can then be subjected to every possible combination of inputs and commands which the real control system might be subjected to.
Control systems can get very complex. There can be a risk that the control system might direct the hardware to behave in an unexpected way, if it is subjected to input conditions which no-one has thought of.

Marine Cybernetics aims to avoid this problem by testing the control system out in thousands of different scenarios or 'use cases', where the control system only controls simulated hardware, not actual hardware.

All equipment vendors thoroughly test their control systems, of course, but Marine Cybernetics provides a secondary independent view. It is often commissioned by customers (oil companies), as a means of verifying the claims made by equipment manufacturers.

The aim is 'to check the control system is robust and can handle everything,' says JanTore Ervik, International Sales Manager with Marine Cybernetics. 'We can simulate all the sequences and scenarios that can happen.'

'We are experts in testing software. That's what we can bring to the table.'

Possible risks of control systems were brought to the industry's attention in a big way in the investigations into the Macondo disaster, when the actual control systems were found to be operating differently to how they were expected to operate. For example, the blow out preventer did not close automatically as expected, and some alarms did not sound as expected.

Marine Cybernetics can create a simulation including all of the equipment on the rig, even made by different manufacturers, to work out how it would behave in different scenarios, mitigating the risk of problems due to equipment made by different manufacturers working together in unexpected ways.

'We can simulate all the equipment on the drill floor,' he says.

The company could typically test out 2,500 different scenarios with the drilling floor control systems in a month. It is a complex process but is much easier than testing it out with real control systems.

It can also test out scenarios which can't easily be tested with real equipment, for example an anti-collision system. 'If it doesn't work that's quite expensive,' he says.

The company was founded in 2002, and uses technology developed at the Norwegian university of Science and Technology in Trondheim (NTNU).

Kongsberg's 'smart agents'
Kongsberg Oil and Gas is developing 'smart agent' tools which can do calculations and models on real time drilling data, to help companies get a deeper understanding of what is going on.

The input drilling data can be supplied in Energistics' 'WITSML' real time data standard format.

Engineers commonly do engineering data calculations by downloading real time data into Excel and feeding it into their engineering software, says David Johnson, Product Manager for Kongsberg's Intellifield Drilling Software.

But by modelling and doing calculations with real time data, you can get a much faster understanding of it.

Kongsberg produces 'Discovery Web', which it claims is 'the most advanced browser based visualisation tool on the market for making drilling decisions.' It enables drilling engineers, geologists and others to visualise and analyse all the data in real time in any location using a web browser.

An iPad and iPhone version of the software is available for download from the Apple APP Store. It is designed to make maximum use of the screen space available.

People can use it to collaborate on the data.

It is used by 'the majority' of oil companies for monitoring their real time drilling data,' Mr Johnson says.

Running behind it is Kongsberg's Site Com database, which gathers together all of the drilling data in a database, together with historical data, reports, files and chat.

Kongsberg Oil and Gas has 3 software development centres, in Kristiansand, Houston and India.

Verdande - expanding into financial services

Verdande Technology, based in Trondheim (Norway), reports that its software, to help drillers make decisions by comparing current information with past cases, is also finding a market in the financial services and healthcare industries.

The software uses a form of artificial intelligence called Case-Based Reasoning (CBR), using past events to provide early warning of potential future problems.
By comparing current data with historical experience, the Verdande Technology platform can give a driller information along the lines of 'last time the hole conditions were like this, a twist-off resulted.' It essentially automates the way that knowledge is passed down between drillers so you have the most relevant information available in real time to help mitigate a costly drilling problem.

This way, it acts as an early warning system and real-time decision support tool.

Recently, Verdande Technology announced its launch into the financial services and healthcare industries. 'For industries that spend billions on IT, it is hard to believe that they still do not have a way to accurately predict business-impacting events, whether that be a trading systems crash at an investment bank or a common surgical error at a hospital,' says Verdande's Group CEO Lars Olrik.

Verdande's CBR-driven platform empowers firms to use massive amounts of real-time data to reduce major events by identifying, capturing and analysing data patterns and rapidly diagnosing and correcting issues.

Verdande's CBR platform, sits on top of existing data-capture systems across industries to search for those past experiences and providing firms with information they need in real time. The platform integrates with existing tools and is not rule-based, so it can interpret complex datasets without the need for creating detailed and time-consuming rules.

APS Technology

APS Technology of Wallingford, Connecticut, has developed the 'Sure Shot' measuring while drilling (MWD)system, which aims to provide much more sophisticated data from the drill bit than has been available before.

It can provide azimuth and inclination data, which can be used to drill complex well paths more easily.

It can provide information about how the drill bit is rotating, which can be used to detect whirl (where the drill bit is rotating too fast due to less connection with the rock) or slick slip (where the drill bit rotates with a juddery motion).

With the data, an estimation can be made of the weight on bit downhole - which can be much more useful than the weight on bit calculated at the surface, because the surface data needs to be corrected for the impact of friction of the drill string against the well wall.

It can be powered by battery or by a turbine generator, or a combination of both.

Altogether, it helps drilling engineers get a much faster idea of which parameters need changing, says Brian Stroehlein, Marketing Manager of APS Technology.

Using 3D printing for drilling

Subsea Solutions of Houston and Rio de Janeiro is using 3D printers to develop models of subsea drilling equipment - which give people a much better understanding of how it works.

The company has been contracted to build two models of a wellhead stack for an oil major working in the Gulf of Mexico -one for the office and one for the rig.
'We can print anything and show the insides,' says Mariza Alvares, VP Corporate Development with Subsea Solutions.

Manufacturers of equipment can provide pictures, but holding a 3D model gives you a much clear idea, she said.

Associated Companies
» National Oilwell Varco

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