Drilling advances

The Walter Mittys among us may envision a drilling tour populated entirely with robots, mechanically gliding about location, communicating in monosyllables and making snap decisions on how best to circulate an influx out of the wellbore. Fantasy aside, the traditional oil patch, nonetheless, is undergoing a dynamic transformation in the human component, with a new generation bringing markedly different aptitudes and attitudes.

With its appropriately christened “The New Age in Drilling,” the IADC Drilling Engineers Committee’s (DEC) quarterly Technology Forum, in June, provided a snapshot of the data-driven competencies that will characterize tomorrow’s drilling environment. A diverse Houston panel, comprising what were described as “up-and-coming drilling technologists,” reflected the perspective of a new-generation of professionals and their influence on technology development and the refinement of typically doctrinal business models. The reliance on shareable programs to avoid re-inventing the proverbial wheel was a common thread among the four panelists, representing BP, Shell, Transocean, and horizontal and directional drilling services provider, Phoenix Technology Services.

Between the bust-induced Great Crew Drain, pending retirements, and the rapidly accelerating digital revolution, the industry, once more, faces an impending personnel shortfall, particularly those with a more data-centric bent. Consequently, companies have little choice but to look beyond their typical staffing pipelines and into business sectors, where talent may be more attuned to coding than drilling, and place a premium on environments that foster creativity.

“While we’re in the midst of a technological revolution, it will still be people at the end of the day, who help those organizations decide how those technologies get incorporated into their businesses, and even how we navigate through disruptions,” said Clena Abuan, formerly a specialist in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, and now senior technology associate for BP’s digital innovation organization (DIO). “By utilizing your people in the right way, things that seem like obstacles can turn into opportunities. Creativity has a very important role to play in this.”

Freedom to explore. This is true, even more so, considering this round of staffing will be unlike any that the industry has experienced previously. “I know we’ve gone through similar (technology) revolutions, but the difference, this time, is the velocity at which new technologies are being developed,” Abuan said. “It’s awe-inspiring and sometimes overwhelming to people, to the point that we really have to think about how are we going to deal with all this new technology and incorporate it into our organizations.”

In attracting a new generation of professionals to do just that, she suggests that the industry follow the lead of the military. “When you think military, the first thing that comes to mind is organization, discipline and rigidity, but I would argue that within some of the teams I’ve been a part of and led, we were successful and at the peak of high performance, because we had created an environment that was conducive to creativity.”

Despite the hullabaloo surrounding the digital revolution, the upstream sector continues to play catch-up. “With today’s cell phones, we carry computers around in our pockets. We use computers everyday to make our lives easier, whether it’s tracking our calorie intake, or how fast we’re running. So, why don’t we use that in drilling technology?” asks Stephanie Mertz Farrar, Phoenix Technology Services process and reliability manager.

She pointed to the role that publicly-available programs played in the computerized system that Phoenix employs for conducting root cause analysis of tool failures, which has reduced the time devoted to the typically mundane task of manual data collection. “We spend less time investigating and doing the dirty work, and more time innovating and working corrective actions,” she said.

Open-source push. Unlike tightly guarded hardware research, the industry needs to get in line with some 80% of companies across the commercial spectrum that rely on open-source software, especially considering the mercurial advancement of new data analytics technologies, says Shell Drilling Research Engineer, Theresa Baumgartner. “We create these apps and models to bring value to Shell, and when I talk to the lawyers, they say this is valuable and we need to patent it and protect it somehow. If you take two years to go through the patent process, it is not that valuable anymore,” she said. “The rate of change of new technology in this space is unbelievable. Apps that may be the latest and greatest right now, won’t be anything great in a year or less.”

She pointed to Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, who cited the “spirit of innovation” for his celebrated decision to put all of the company’s electric vehicle patents in the public domain. “I think the reasoning is that perhaps it is better to have a smaller share of a huge cake, rather than a larger share of a smaller cake,” Dr. Baumgartner said. “It (open sourcing) is also important for attracting new talent from other industries, because to them it seems very antique to come into this industry, and things are the way they were 20 years ago.”

As for open sourcing of data, Dr. Mete Mulu, Transocean’s senior subsea engineer, said that contractors are in an awkward position, caught literally between the operators and vendors. “It’s very hard to say, ‘I’m going to share all my information with everybody,’ because you have to maximize your competitive position,” said Mulu. “As a rig owner, at what level should we be engaging the vendors? At the end of the day, who should have access to data and how do we put value in that data?” 

About the Authors

Jim Redden

Contributing Editor

Jim Redden is a Houston-based consultant and a journalism graduate of Marshall University, has more than 40 years of experience as a writer, editor and corporate communicator, primarily on the upstream oil and gas industry.