DI G ITAL TR AN S FOR MATION
Chevron leverages smart alarms,
multidisciplinary staff at support
center to monitor process safety,
develop fit-for-purpose solutions
Wells Decision Support Center, enabled by
advances in real-time data and digital tools,
can provide ‘infinite’ support for field personnel
BY JESSICA WHITESIDE, CONTRIBUTOR
At Chevron, the primary responsibility for
maintaining well control is placed on indi-
viduals at the rig site. But the company
has a critical second line of defense: its
Wells Decision Support Center (DSC) in
Houston. The DSC uses advanced digital
tools and pods of cross-functional teams
to monitor and analyze real-time data
from wells that may be thousands of miles
away to help field personnel make bet-
ter decisions affecting process safety and
performance. “Ultimately, with continuous improve-
ment in our data quality and our digi-
tal tools, the support that the DSC can
provide truly is infinite,” Alexa Baker,
Drill Site Manager for Chevron, said in a
presentation at the Offshore Technology
Conference in Houston on 1 May.
Chevron formed the DSC in 2011 to help
prevent catastrophic safety events in deep-
water and complex wells. In the years
since, the growth of the company’s uncon-
ventional business in shale and tight rock
plays, combined with advancements in
data and digital capabilities, has created
opportunities for DSC support to be applied
more broadly.
Today, the center’s remit encompasses
wells operations across all of Chevron’s
asset classes, and the DSC teams strive
not only to help manage process safety but
also to develop workflows and solutions
that improve operational efficiency. The
center also performs remote directional
drilling and can drill multiple wells simul-
taneously. DSC staff have diverse background s
encompassing wells operations, engineer-
ing, IT and geolog y and geophysic s. Their
co-location within the DSC, typically five
or six individuals to a pod, has led to
significantly more collaboration oppor-
tunities, Ms Baker said, and has resulted
in reduced costs and improved safety by
reducing headcount on the rigs.
The DSC pods are also organized by asset
class, facilitating the sharing of applicable
lessons learned, she added. Further, stan-
dardization of data – whether time or depth
based – has aided collaboration by making
it easier to pool data across business units .
Real-time monitoring
In unconventional operations, geosteer-
ing specialists provide 24/7 support, and
engineers rely on smart alarms to monitor
for process safety. For deepwater and com-
plex wells, the DSC has real-time opera-
tors (RTOs) providing 24/7 monitoring of
live data during all phases of operations.
RTOs, who all have rig and mud logging
experience, look for kick indicators and
communicate with rig crews about any
abnormalities. Their work is complement-
ed by pore pressure specialists who flag
changes that might indicate an upcoming
well control event. Smart alarms are also
available as an additional line of defense
for well control.
To improve monitoring capabilities,
the DSC developed a comprehensive sys-
tem of process safety smart alarms to
replace traditional high/low alarms that
produced too many false positives. The
smart system, which enables a single DSC
professional to monitor kick indicators on
multiple rigs at a time, can read real-time
data and eliminate any explainable events,
reducing false alarms and improving reli-
ability, Ms Baker said.
To help monitor process safety at Chevron’s Wells Decision Support Center, smart
alarms have replaced traditional high/low alarms, which had produced too many
false positives, said Alexa Baker, Drill Site Manager, at the 2023 OTC in May.
26 J U LY/AU G U ST 2023 • D R I L L I N G C O N T R AC T O R
“Chevron support center”
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