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Petrolink; integrating drilling data from the rig

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Aggregating drilling data on the rig from different sources and sending it home from a rig is not an easy task, says Adi Iswanto, Indonesian country manager, Petrolink International

Many companies are asking for real time drilling data from a rig, although aggregating data on board and communicating it back to shore is not an easy task, says Adi Iswanto, Indonesian country manager Petrolink International. Speaking at the Digital Energy Journal Oct 24th conference in KL, 'doing more with drilling data'.

Petrolink aims to provide 'seamless' data integration, which means removing the intensive manual tasks associated with data transfer and having data gathered together in minimum time.

'Seamless data integration is not Plug and Play,' he said. 'It's not something that you can go to your laptop, plugin your USB disk and you can see your data easily, it's not like that.

'It's a process, it requires a lot of planning, it requires a lot of collaboration from people and other service companies, to ensure that we can get seamless data integration.'

The benefits of it should be improved decision making, safer operations (from having better access to data), better interoperability with different systems, and the operator having more control over their data and independence from service companies.

Challenges

The first challenge on board the rig is aggregating multiple data from multiple data sources.

'At the rig site, we have two types of data available. Real time data includes rig sensors, mudlogging information, LWD/MWD, Cementing unit, well testing information.

'Static data includes reports, drilling data reports, geology reports, mud log plots, interpreted lithologs, LWD/MWD plots, digital data, photographs or other types of files like Excel spread sheets or Word documents.'

You want to integrate all of this together at the rig side into one data set.

All of the data should be stored in a database on the rig site, in case there is a drop in data communications from the rig to the shore.

Petrolink suggests that the data should be transferred from the rig using WITSML data format, aggregating data from the various service companies involved. The WITSML standard can support nearly all types of well data, he said.

Many companies have been using a system called 'WITS' for data exchange from rigs since the mid 80s, which sends data in binary format (0s and 1s).

WITSML provides much more information, including what is in what data stream, what unit you are using.

'This will save a lot of time when people need data exchange because then you don't need to ask what is your information, it's all already filled with WITSML,' he said.

You probably want a system to monitor how the data is transferring, with alarms to sound if there are problems.

In the office you want to connect the data into your various software applications which can analyse it, and generate reports to be sent to people's mobile devices or e-mails.

You need to monitor real time data, and you need to be able to get the data to the person who actually makes decisions with it.

PetroLink offers tools which can (for example) combine mud logging data with LWD/MWD data onto one screen. It could also display data from different oil wells at the same time.

You can compare your current drilling progress against previous wells as you go along. You can set yourself alarms if parameters reach certain values.

You can analyse your non-productive time by studying when the bit depth is increasing.

You can configure data to go onto smart phones.

There are also companies with services to analyse WITSML data and return it back in real time.

Associated Companies
» Petrolink International

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