Data analysis, visualization project develops drilling engineers of the future

As big data and automation play increasingly significant roles in drilling operations, the skill sets required of drilling engineers of the future are also changing. For one, they will need to be adept at data analysis, Dr Eric van Oort, Consortium Director for the RAPID program at UT’s Cockrell School of Engineering, said at the 2017 SPE/IADC Drilling Conference in The Hague, The Netherlands. Dr van Oort co-authored a paper at the conference outlining the consortium’s work on a data analysis project for an independent operator. The project challenged students to analyze data and create visualizations that provided the operator with efficiency insights. In this video from the conference on 14 March, Dr van Oort discusses some of the challenges the project team faced with curating a large data set, as well as the value that such projects provide for both students and the industry.