Drilling 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.

“What is the drilling state” has become an important question among data scientists and automation experts. The simplest definition of a complicated concept is that it is what the driller is doing at the time.

Can a camera on the drill floor, or one on a mobile phone, measure what is going on during drilling or evaluate drill-bit wear more consistently than a human?

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

The two companies have agreed to team up so their most-valued drilling-automation programs can be used together easily. The relationship has shined a bright light on drilling automation.

As the saying goes, the future is now. This is certainly the case offshore Norway, which represents one of the industry’s most influential test beds for impactful innovation.

Technology is advancing, and applications are growing, but scaling faces technological and human challenges.

When humankind returns to the Moon to establish colonies it will be bringing with it technologies born in the oil and mining industries. The European Space Agency and Russia’s Roscosmos will be central to that effort as they prepare to land a robotic drilling system to extract oxygen and water from frozen lunar soil.

The authors describe challenges that must be overcome to reach the goal of drilling systems automation.

This paper details the introduction of a drilling automation system to deliver superior well-construction performance in a major gas field.