automation

ExxonMobil has drilled a horizontal well with a rig billed by Nabors as the first fully automated land rig. The big question now is whether ExxonMobil will come back for more after this three-well test.

It won’t happen overnight, but a growing number of US shale players are taking important steps to bring more automation and stage-level decision making to the hydraulic fracturing process in tight reservoirs.

SPYDR, MetaRock team up with Pioneer Natural Resources for a pilot program in the Permian Basin to test real-time fluid monitoring.

The risk-management firm is teaming up with academia and a robotics specialist for a research project focused on automatic processing of data gathered by autonomous and remote-controlled vehicles.

Economical oil extraction depends largely on reducing wear and tear of downhole equipment and tubulars through regular monitoring and batch treatment to cut the risk of corrosion and costly workovers. Having a data-driven approach to scheduling batch treatment can bring down the frequency of treatment and avoid the unnecessary use of resources.

Drilling automation and innovation continue as dominant trends despite market downturns and unprecedented challenges in the past year. In many ways, the drive toward new efficiencies and step changes in well-construction performance has taken on an even greater sense of urgency.

Digitalization and automation successes are here to stay. Instead of making small incremental steps in well construction operations, allowing disruptive shifts can lead to tangible performance gains in efficiency, safety, and well integrity.

Forced to tighten their belts financially by the coronavirus pandemic, businesses are increasingly using software that automates back-office tasks. The idea, of course, is for companies to save money by reducing the number of workers they need to handle clerical work.

Digital advances allow computers to do many of the tedious tasks once done by engineers, which frees them to focus on more interesting tasks.