DRILLING & COMPLETION TECH DIGEST • DEPARTMENTS
Transocean Encourage drills its first fully automated hole section
The Transocean Encourage recently
drilled its first fully automated hole sec-
tions while working for Equinor in Norway.

Transocean, Equinor and HMH worked
together to complete the autonomous oper-
ation at the Heidrun field in April.

The goal was to automate routine opera-
tions, reducing the potential for human
errors and driving efficiency. “Thus, giv-
ing the drillers more time to focus on
what really matters, like well construction
challenges and red zone management,”
said Francesco Ferri, Operations Manager,
Europe & Mediterranean for Transocean.

To enable this operation, the semi-
submersible was equipped with several
“smart modules” that are designed to:
■ Establish well protection parameters,
which are set either manually by the user
(static mode) or detected by the digital
twin of the well (dynamic mode);
■ Optimize torque adjustments to improve
the rate of penetration (ROP) and reduce
wear and tear on the bottomhole assembly
(BHA) and drill bit;
■ Optimize weight on bit (WOB), achieved
in combination with the use of an active
heave compensator to minimize the
weight variations;
■ Improve human-machine interface to
better visualize the main drilling param-
eters and easily control the equipment on
the rig floor;
■ Facilitate automatic tripping in and out
of hole. This allows a reduction in the
number of buttons to be clicked, from 18
with two operators down to just three
confirmations from one operator. Tripping
speed is optimized automatically to meet
the values of surge and swab simulated in
real time; and
■ Provide for automatic drilling connec-
tion sequences, including “off-bottom”
activities like connections and pipe han-
dling, as well as tagging bottom and auto-
drilling. The hole sections were drilled by
designing automatic sequences for trip-
ping and drilling and for making up drill-
ing connections. Automatic controls on
torque and WOB optimized the ROP and
increased the operating window .

“The focus is not only on performance
and consistency but, most importantly,
The Transocean Encourage recently deployed a new drilling assistance module,
working in concert with other smart modules on the rig, to drill a fully automated
hole section on a well at the Heidrun fi eld in Norway.

on incident prevention, through automatic
protections that allow improved response
time to critical conditions, e.g., hookload
protection, pack-off protection, flow limi-
tations, etc,” Mr Ferri said.

“Such protections are enhanced by
real-time simulations of characteristic
parameters of the well to automatically
adapt the ongoing operations, for exam-
ple, optimized tripping speed accounting
for continuous surge and swab simula-
tions, or automatic mud pump startup
sequences.” Finally, he added, the integration of
downhole real-time data collection and
topside automation allows a “closed-loop”
system to move from automatic to autono-
mous. Data analytics to enable
further fine tuning
On Cat D rigs like the Transocean
Encourage, which are specialized for the
harsh environments of offshore Norway,
work on automatic drilling technologies
has been in progress since summer 2017,
Mr Ferri said, with the goal of moving por-
tions of the drilling process from automa-
tion toward autonomous operations.

In April this year, the Transocean
Encourage tested for the first time the
use of a new drilling assistance module
in combination with the relevant smart
modules. The ongoing operation was drill-
ing the 16-in. and 12 ¼ -in. hole sections on
the F-4 well at the Heidrun field operated
by Equinor.

The rig team executed a total of 51 con-
nections with a median slip-to-slip (S2S)
time of 3.14 min, all without intervention
from the driller. The best S2S time was 2.88
min, while the best weight-to-weight time
was 4.16 min.

Even though the Transocean Encourage
was the first rig to demonstrate the per-
formance of the smart modules working
together, the results from this first deploy-
ment were already competitive with
results achieved manually, Mr Ferri said.

“Further fine-tuning will be implemented
through the learnings extrapolated with
data analytics,” he added.

The Transocean Encourage is on an
eight-year contract with Equinor that had
been set to expire in December. In March,
Equinor extended the rig’s contract for
nine additional wells.

On other rigs in its fleet, Transocean
has been working to deploy an automation
solution from InteliWell. The independent
joint venture, in which Transocean has
partial ownership, offers similar automa-
tion functionality, Mr Ferri said, and initial
results have been promising.

D R I L L I N G C O N T R AC T O R • J U LY/AU G U ST 2023
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