DI G ITALI ZATION OF DR I LLI N G
Digital twins building
new engineering worlds
in a digital ecosystem
Intelligent software systems enhance drilling engineers’ decision
making with rapid visualizations, real-time well plan updates
BY STEPHEN WHITFIELD, ASSOCIATE EDITOR
T he oil and gas industry is in the throes of a digital revolu-
tion that is already creating step changes in the efficiency
of well planning and well construction. As part of that
revolution, digital twins – software-based representations of
physical assets – are increasingly becoming a key tool in the push
to drive greater efficiencies in all stages of E&P.

Digital twins of production assets, like FPSOs and offshore
supply vessels, are already commonplace, allowing operators to
minimize downtime and maintenance costs. Lately, companies
have also developed and continue to refine digital twins of the
Highlights
Ease of data sharing is driving work to
develop an open-source platform for
geological modeling and well planning
based on OSDU architecture.

Digital twins must balance between using
automation to streamline well planning
workflows and providing engineers with
flexibility for more uncertain scenarios.

Increasingly sophisticated predictive and
real-time analytic capabilities prove the
value of digital twins during drilling by
helping to prevent NPT.

14 wellbore itself, generating efficiencies during both well planning
and drilling.

“We need these digital platforms and these digital twins,” said
Arnfinn Grøtte, Manager – Drilling and Wells Digitalization at
Aker BP, adding that the need to better understand available data
is driving a lot of the operator’s digital transformation efforts. “We
need new architecture that will allow us to use the data we have,
and these are the kinds of systems we’re building.”
Digital twins are already commonly being used to streamline
the well design process and to serve a wide range of well con-
struction functions, such as optimizing drilling parameters like
rate of penetration (ROP) and weight on bit (WOB). Additionally,
with their predictive capabilities, they alert operators to potential
issues downhole like collisions or stuck pipe that could add non-
productive time (NPT) to a drilling operation.

Increasingly, the industry is also seeing open-source platforms
aimed at easing the integration of data across multiple platforms.

Such systems allow companies to more easily visualize a multi-
tude of well construction scenarios and make better decisions.

“We’re really tying together the system from the perspectives
of geoscience, planning and design, and execution and even
production, so that we have a common and rapid understand-
ing of the changes happening downhole,” said Olivier Germain,
Digitalization Program Director at Halliburton Digital Solutions.

“With these systems, we’re seeing much more integration across
the sectors. The operator is not working on its own but is working
with multiple suppliers to optimize the well’s design, so that not
only do you know where to drill the well, but you also improve the
execution of the drilling program and its outcome.”
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DI G ITALI ZATION OF DR I LLI N G
Above: Aker BP’s Field Development Planning application, de-
veloped jointly with Halliburton and launched this year, can
model multiple wellbores within a single field. The app allows
the operator to analyze the risk profiles of each well as they
relate to one another – for instance, it can visualize potential
collision risk between wellbores.

Right: Halliburton’s Digital Well Program, launched in 2019 as
part of the company’s DecisionSpace 365 line of software
solutions, enables users to streamline well planning by run-
ning automated simulations of the well to be drilled and de-
tecting potential issues that could arise during drilling.

Automated simulations help to analyze risks
in well construction
One of Halliburton’s entries into the world of digital well plan-
ning is DecisionSpace 365, an umbrella name covering a line
of cloud-based geoscience, production, reservoir and drilling
applications. Two of these applications are Digital Well Program
and Well Operations Monitor, both launched in 2019, which allow
users to design a well plan, create a digital twin of the planned
well and monitor activities against that plan.

To design a well using the Digital Well Program, two work-
flows are available: factory and interactive. The factory drilling
workflow essentially uses the concept of the program template
or archetype, requiring inputs on target and surface location, the
well template to be used and confirmation about the subsurface
data. The program will run automated simulations of the drill
plan, including well trajectory analyses, geological prognoses,
well integrity analyses, well completion analyses and estimated
drilling time and costs.

If the system does not detect any issues with these variables,
the user gets a green light. If issues are detected, the system will
alert the user with either an orange or red light, depending on the
severity of the issues detected, as well as provide analysis of the
detected issues. As the user revises the well plan, the system will
also run automated workflows using new engineering models
and update the activity on the fly.

Under the interactive workflow, users can analyze the risk
probabilities of various scenarios based on a wide range of dif-
ferent factors. For instance, if the user is unsure about how much
WOB to apply, the system can run concurrent simulations of the
well plan using different WOB levels. A green-orange-red indi-
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