CRITICAL ISSUES IN DRILLING & COMPLETIONS
We have made significant progress in
deploying technologies that effectively
automate the process of drilling, and that
eliminates the variability and inconsis-
tencies that come with human beings
making decisions. You may not get the
highest level of efficiency from day one of
deploying a technology, but you will get
consistency and repeatability. Over time as
that technology is optimized, you will start
to gain efficiency. Technology deployment
is a journey, and how people consume that
technology at the rig is really what will
make it either a success or a failure.
So will humans always be needed at
the rig site, even in a highly autono-
mous drilling operation?
Nabors’ X29 rig has been retrofi tted with the Canrig RZR and has drilled multiple
wells for ExxonMobil in the Permian Basin.
collaborate with each other to deploy solu-
tions that are mutually beneficial.
This seems like a big shift away from
15-20 years ago, when contractors pri-
marily developed technologies or
equipment for their own rigs.
Absolutely, it’s a big shift, but it’s neces-
sary. Technology today evolves at such
a quick pace, and it requires significant
investments, so we can’t all invest in
everything while maintaining financial
discipline. Each drilling contractor has
a unique value proposition, so we really
don’t need to compete on everything. Find
your niche, find where you can prosper
and outsource the rest – that way every-
body can be successful.
Where do you think the next step
changes in efficiency on your rigs are
going to come from?
In today’s drilling operations, between
stuck pipes and BHAs that are lost due to
twist-offs, well control and other safety
issues, the industry loses hundreds of mil-
lions of dollars. The step change in effi-
ciency is going to come from how we can
eliminate those drilling dysfunctions in
real time while we are drilling.
30 Drilling contractors’ focus has been to
optimize connection and tripping speeds,
which are valuable, but those are simpler
problems to solve. The bigger problems
still remain, and they will require sig-
nificant collaboration with customers. By
applying data science and other digital
solutions, we can create a loop of continu-
ous improvement. This will allow for bet-
ter planning because we can choose better
drilling parameters, and it will help in the
execution of the drilling roadmap. Further,
when something unplanned happens, it
will allow us to course-correct and quickly
push out new parameters to the rig.
Why do you think we haven’t been
able to achieve this before?
First, we were very reliant on experi-
enced people to mitigate risks. Second, the
industry was not using technologies like
edge or cloud computing or algorithms for
real-time analytics. Those technologies
exist now thanks to investments from a
lot of technology firms, and we are able
to adopt them to create our own digital
ecosystem. Can you talk about the progress
Nabors has made in eliminating the
drilling dysfunctions you mentioned ?
I believe so, although the skill sets of the
humans will be different. When Nabors
launched our newly built autonomous rig,
R801, and when we fully automated an
existing rig with our new robotics upgrade,
the crew sizes were still the same, but we
had more software people on the rig. There
will always be decisions that need to be
made in real time, and I don’t think arti-
ficial intelligence has advanced to such a
level that they can be taken by machines
completely. What would you say are the key
enablers to seeing more automation
at scale across our industry?
They need to be modular, rig agnostic and
capital light. As with anything groundbreak-
ing, the cost of development is high. For
something like that to be a success at scale,
the cost – both to the manufacturer and to
the customer – needs to come down. There
will also need to be a mindset shift, where
organizations recognize that they want to
use the technology, whether they developed
it or not, because it improves performance
and HSE, and they have to be willing to go
through the required learning curve.
Do you see increasing demand from
operators for these types of automa-
tion technologies?
Absolutely. We have deployed our pro-
cess and machine automation technolo-
gies across our fleet and for various rig
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CRITICAL ISSUES IN DRILLING & COMPLETIONS
contractors in the US, and we have been
running them internationally in regions
like Latin America. Just recently, we
deployed some of our newest automation
technology on rigs in Saudi Arabia, which
is an exciting milestone for Nabors and the
Middle East market.
What long-term role do you see drill-
ing contractors playing in the energy
transition? Q&A with Bonnie Black, Pioneer,
continued from page 15
Most of the rigs that we’re running
today were built during the boom we saw
in the early 2010s. With the pace of today’s
drilling operations, we’re definitely push-
ing their limits to drill faster and far-
ther. As we continue to require more from
those rigs in the coming years, we will
likely need things like higher torque on
top drives, better iron roughnecks, higher
racking capacity and probably bigger mud
pumps. Pioneer is also very focused on gen-
erator management as part of our car-
bon reduction efforts and ESG in general.
Technologies that can help us to run gen-
erators efficiently and minimize diesel
usage will be beneficial. Ultimately, we
Q&A with João Henrique Rittershausen,
Petrobras, continued from page 27
When it comes to innovation for off-
shore rigs, what upgrades would you
like to see?
Today, it is not easy to request big
changes in drilling rigs, so we are try-
ing to hire rigs that will require the
least amount of changes to operate for
Petrobras. However, we still see some
advancements that would be good, par-
ticularly technologies around diesel con-
sumption reduction and riserless opera-
tions. We would also like to see BOPs
with a higher shearing capacity, because
when you look at a risk matrix for an oil
company, a blowout is the highest risk we
have. We need to do everything we can to
I see two ways drilling contractors can
play a role in the energy transition space.
One is by lowering the carbon footprint of
their rigs because that is something that
is within their control. By deploying or
developing technologies, we can reduce
the amount of fuel consumption on our
rigs. In turn, that will create value for
ourselves, for our customers and for the
environment. Apart from that, there are a few adja-
cent industries where we can play a role.
Geothermal is one of them, which is why
Nabors has invested in that.
I would not say that drilling contractors
should go headlong into energy transition
projects because they are not necessarily
going to be aligned to the core business.
It depends upon the strategy that each
drilling contractor has. I believe that oil
and gas will remain important even as the
world’s energy mix diversifies in the com-
ing years. DC
may also see the industry gravitate toward
electrifying rigs and running on highline
power. I think there’s a lot of opportunity
for both operators and service companies
to continue exploring in this space.
I don’t have the solution, but I do believe
that it is the obligation of everyone who is
part of this great industry to help attract
the next generation. This means that we
have to tell our story and show people
how much good we do for people and the
planet. For the young people we do attract into
our industry, we also need to make sure
they understand the role they’re playing in
energy security. Compared with previous
generations, I think young workers today
place a much heavier emphasis on hav-
ing a sense of purpose. They’re looking for
meaning in their work, and they want to
be proud of what they do. That means our
industry has to make sure we’re creating
an atmosphere where our purpose is not
only understood but also appreciated at all
levels of the workforce. DC
What are your views on the difficulties
that our industry faces in attracting
next-generation workers?
I’m the mom of two college-aged boys,
and one of them recently went to a career
fair where he said every single company
there had a long line of students waiting to
talk to them, yet there was no one at the oil
and gas table. I think that is very illustra-
tive of the challenge we’re facing. The next
generation has been persuaded by society
that our industry is bad, and that’s hugely
problematic for us.
ensure we will not have an uncontrolled
well. We would also like to see more dynami-
cally positioned (DP) rigs that are capable
of operating in shallow waters. Today’s
environmental restrictions mean that
sometimes we cannot use moored rigs to
drill and complete shallow-water wells
anymore, and we need DP rigs that can
allow us to conduct abandonment opera-
tions for those types of wells.
And, of course, digitalization is a very
important point to us because we see
automated drilling as the future. We are
discussing new initiatives with rig con-
tractors and service companies to use
automation systems so that, no matter
who the driller is, we can always have
software that is using the best knowledge
of the best driller to control the drilling
system. We are confident that automation
can increase the efficiency and value cre-
ation throughout the drilling process.
If we look at well completions specifi-
cally, what do you see as the biggest
challenges and technology gaps?
For us, it’s all-electric completions. We
want to move from a mix of hydraulic/
electric to all-electric completions that can
be more reliable and cost effective. We are
working with several companies to have
all-electric completions qualified.
Within the next couple of years, we
expect to install the first electric, open-
hole intelligent completion, and we expect
this to be a game-changer for us in terms
of reliability and capability to manage the
reservoir. DC
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