Weatherford launches software platform for streamlining digital wellsite operations

By Stephen Whitfield, Associate Editor

Weatherford recently announced the launch of its Centro digital well delivery platform, which the company says will allow operators to better integrate their data and provide an interface for team members around the world to access, share and store project information at any time.

The system provides vendor-neutral aggregation of high-volume WITS or WITSML data, which Weatherford said allows for the safe transfer of information over a secure network to a centralized repository. High-resolution data streams from multiple sources – including rig site, offset well databases, geological and geophysical data – and delivered at rates of less than a second. Weatherford said on the product’s website that the infrastructure is capable of handling more than 100 curves and wells simultaneously.

“You start with seismic, you start with offset logs, whichever shape or form. All of that is stored somewhere, and it gives you the foundation of a future problem,” said Julio Loreto, Vice President of Drilling Services and Mexico Country Manager at Weatherford. “You say, based on this critical data, these are the parameters I’m going to use. That’s part of your database. Then, as you’re drilling, you have information from all these different sources coming in. You have data from your tools, and you have your third-party information coming in. All of that is aggregated in different formats depending on the customers and their requirements.”

Speaking with DC at the 2020 IADC/SPE International Drilling Conference in Galveston, Texas, shortly after the launch, Mr Loreto compared the platform to Facebook, in that it provides a customizable interface for users. Weatherford said its platform enables asset teams to display and interact with complex data sets, leading to multi-domain collaboration. Mr Loreto said the interface was a critical element of the platform’s development.

“With Facebook, you see the stuff that you want to see, your friends, the other things in your ecosystem. This should be the same way, if I’m a customer and I’m opening a well to look at something. If something good happens, and there’s another well on the other side of the world with similar conditions, the people at that other well should know right away. It’s their data. It’s their system. We need to get the lessons learned to the customer right away so that they can develop new methodologies to drive their efficiencies,” Mr Loreto said.

According to Weatherford, Centro makes consolidated data available in real time. Latency issues when processing data are fairly minor, he added.

“It’s all relative. When we talk latency, if you’re talking about seconds or minutes depending on how fast you’re drilling, it might be acceptable. Today, latency might be measured in terms of days or weeks. You go from saying ‘this is what we learned last month’ to ‘this is what we’re looking at right now.’ What I love about the platform is that we’re setting up the process, how we aggregate, how we integrate, how we analyze the data and how we push it,” Mr Loreto said.