Nabors, Independence Contract Drilling pave path for new type of automation partnership
Nabors Industries and Independence Contract Drilling (ICD) released initial results from a collaboration to deploy two automation systems on ICD’s rigs. Nabors’ SmartROS rig operating system and SmartDRILL technology were installed and deployed on an ICD rig in West Texas, leading to a 34% improvement in weight-on-weight connections and 24% improvement in overall connection times. In East Texas, Nabors’ REVit top drive automation system helped another ICD rig reduce the frequency of stick slip by 62%.
At the 2024 IADC/SPE International Drilling Conference in Galveston on 5 March in Galveston, Texas, representatives from the two drilling contractor companies spoke about the results of their partnership and the model it offers for the wider industry. Brandon Rosler, Ops Manager – Performance Tools at Nabors, explains what the SmartDRILL, SmartROS and REVit systems do and discusses field deployment results. John Alvarado, Senior Sales Manager at Nabors, speaks about the challenges of generating operator buy-in, and Scott Keller, Senior VP at ICD, talks about the value of the collaboration from ICD’s perspective, as well as how rig crews were trained on the Nabors systems.
