The authors of the complete paper describe a collaboration between an operator and a service company formed during a project’s well-planning phase to evaluate the feasibility of automation for a holistic drilling-advisory platform that facilitates real-time decision making based on downhole and surface data. The collaboration resulted in a successful deployment of an automation platform as a solution to manage and mitigate risks and optimize drilling operations in exploration wells.
Introduction
The probability of nonproductive time (NPT) and invisible lost time (ILT) occurring in exploration wells is higher because of a lack of experience in the area concerned. The operator estimates that NPT caused by hole problems accounts for 22% of total NPT (Fig. 1 above).
The authors’ work aims to apply a novel, automated drilling-operation monitoring technique on a wildcat exploration well in the Gulf of Mexico through the collaboration of operator and service provider.
