Integrated drilling software raises the bar for automation, simulation training in critical wells

Depleted fields and the decline of easy-to-tap reservoirs have pushed the E&P industry into plays, where drilling requires sophisticated and advanced technologies alongside greater expertise in preventing and managing well-control events. This trend is especially evident in extreme drilling environments and deepwater wells, where risk and the cost of failure are very high. To drill these wells efficiently, safely and economically, operators are adopting drilling practices, such as managed pressure drilling (MPD)—once reserved for niche applications—with greater frequency.

Alongside this shift is a growing embrace of automation, which promises to elevate operational performance of these drilling protocols with comprehensive, consistent and seamless systems that reduce complexity, and enhance efficiency and real-time decision-making. The cornerstone of an automated MPD control system is the marine rotating control device (RCD), used in the mud-return system to contain annular fluids while drilling. The device makes underbalanced, near-balanced and overbalanced drilling possible when the risk of gas kicks is elevated. It rotates fluids through a control manifold, engineered with advanced sensory technology that extracts critical data from the fluids.

Fig. 1. The OneSync platform enables remote monitoring of MPD operations using collected data and a real-time hydraulics engine. Image: Weatherford.

The advantages of MPD automation can be extended by using a single, automated software platform that can transition all phases of the well, integrating pre-job planning, execution and post-job analysis to facilitate better decisions. This approach provides a number of benefits. First, the software platform can serve as a training mechanism for running realistic well-control scenarios prior to jobs. Additionally, the same scenarios can be deployed in the field, ensuring that decisions are based on quantitative calculations and reliable data, rather than “best guesses” and assumptions dependent on crew experience.

Crew experience is always important, but in increasingly complex, challenging wells, where well control is a significant concern, experience is always augmented by a high degree of automation. The quantitative data resulting from automated systems gives production companies greater assurance that operational decisions are sound, and that wells can be drilled economically and safely.

In 2014, Weatherford developed the OneSync software platform, a comprehensive drilling-software package that enhances design and planning, simulation, and well control during complex drilling operations under a single umbrella. The platform’s underlying foundation of automation makes it well-suited to a variety of applications, including well monitoring, Fig. 1. However, it is especially effective when paired with the advanced drilling techniques increasingly required in extreme drilling environments. For example, the platform expands the capabilities and effectiveness of early kick detection (EKD) and constant bottomhole pressure (CBHP) MPD, a method in which surface backpressure (SBP) is applied through a closed-loop circulation system, Fig. 2.

While it is common to have automation software in place to control the robotics of a given operation, the new platform was developed to expand the scope of automation with three integrated software suites: well planning; simulation; and operation. The goal in developing this capability was to create a single, consistent platform across these processes, starting with the planning and design phase of the well. The same software configuration is used during drilling to operate the MPD system, apply the CBHP method of MPD, and detect well-control events.

Fig. 2. When combined with the MPD control system, the OneSync operations software suite enables early kick and loss detection, thus enhancing operational control. Image: Weatherford.

Further, the software performs data analysis, which enables personnel to learn from past jobs and eventually master the best operational practices to optimize performance and achieve drilling objectives. Rather than relying on past knowledge and personal experience, the software helps support, and further enhance, crew decision-making.

When paired with the OneSync platform, the full potential of the MPD control system is realized through improved planning, simulations, rig-crew preparedness, real-time decision-making, operational control and data analysis.

A STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP

As a training tool, the system provides the entire rig crew—including operator, drilling contractor and service providers—with improved preparation and aptitude to prevent well-control events and reduce nonproductive time (NPT). Well control is a key benefit of MPD, and as the industry moves toward greater adoption and implementation of the technique, it is imperative that crews receive hands-on training. Comprehensive, well-organized training enables crews to fully understand the MPD operations that they will be managing, and to learn to work in an integrated fashion with the automated software platform.

To that end, in November 2015, Weatherford Secure Drilling Services and Maersk Training formed a strategic partnership to use the OneSync platform for enhanced, scenario-based training and competency for critical wells. Maersk Training has extensive experience in providing advanced, simulation-based well-control training for offshore rig crews from multiple production companies. Accordingly, the firm has integrated the MPD simulator application of the software platform into its high-fidelity well control simulators to facilitate comprehensive MPD and well-control planning, as well as scenario-based training.

Fig. 3. Using the fully integrated OneSync MPD simulation application as its foundational tool, Maersk Training equips personnel, operator and rig crew with MPD operational preparedness. Image: Maersk Training.

The partnership underscores the industry’s need to more effectively meet the challenges of today’s wells, by offering a more encompassing method to prepare rig crews for complex drilling scenarios. Using the software platform, crews receive rigorous training in well control and drilling techniques in a simulated environment, preparing for scenarios that they are expected to encounter during the job, Fig. 3. The Maersk Training protocol has been applied in several North Sea operations, where MPD was required to drill challenging wells with well stability issues and narrow pore and fracture gradients.

Weatherford is a longtime provider of advanced drilling techniques, including the field-proven Microflux control system. This automated, closed-loop system provides an effective alternative to conventional drilling methods by detecting very small fluid influxes or losses to minimize well-control incidents and enhance drilling efficiency. Moreover, the system enables dynamic formation integrity and pore pressure testing (DFIT/DPPT) for accurate measurement of the lower and upper boundaries of the downhole pressure envelope. Maintaining SBP while tripping out eliminates kicks taken, due to swab effect, and increases rate of penetration (ROP) by allowing drilling with BHP closer to the pore pressure line. This empowers operators to make decisions based on actual surface and wellbore data, rather than predictive models.

The system’s ability to allow for optimizing mud weight is especially beneficial when the window between pore pressure and fracture gradient is very narrow. In wells with extremely narrow pressure windows and ballooning, the system automatically adjusts SBP to maintain CHBP and, thereby, control kick/loss cycles, even when pumping is stopped. Used with pressurized mud-cap drilling in sour reservoirs, the MPD control system ensures that the flowrate and SBP can be manipulated in a way that forces hazardous gas back downhole.

ENGINEERING POWER TO THE RIG

The comprehensive software platform also eliminates a significant disconnect between the initial well plan—which is typically designed offsite by engineers using desktop software to calculate drilling parameters based on assumptions—and the actual operation, where conditions are subject to change. In many cases, the assumptions made during the design phase are no longer applicable in the actual drilling scenario, removing the ability to rely on carefully calculated parameters and placing all decision-making responsibility on the shoulders of the personnel running the job. Often, rig crews are overwhelmed with too much information and the pressure of following multiple parameters, yet are expected to make precise decisions that are very challenging.

However, by applying a single, streamlined software platform to all phases of the job, crews can access recorded data to make more informed decisions for adjusting key drilling parameters. The stored, integrated data also provide a mechanism for learning lessons from each project very precisely, enabling crews to better understand drilling events and fine-tune the procedures accordingly, from one job to the next. For example, in one North Sea operation experiencing issues, analysis of the pressure-while-drilling memory data, coupled with the MPD data, enabled the crew to make minor changes in the surface pressure schedules that led to significant improvement in the overall bottomhole pressure control during connections. This improvement continued during subsequent operations.

Since forming the strategic partnership, Maersk Training has trained two full crews—close to 40 people—using the MPD simulator application of the automated software platform at its facility in Svendborg, Denmark. Maersk Training also has opened a simulation facility in Houston, Fig. 4.

Fig. 4. The Maersk Training facility in Houston was designed to immerse participants in realistic simulations of well and rig-specific scenarios, to improve overall safety and risk mitigation techniques in offshore drilling operations. Image: Maersk Training.

Eleven operations—eight of which were offshore—have been conducted using the software platform. Training is designed to develop integrated, high-functioning teams that are well-prepared to meet safety and operational performance requirements in an offshore operational environment. That approach is rooted in human behavioral observations that, when systems are made more robust with advanced technology, people tend to become increasingly dependent on those systems and ultimately take more risks.

In addressing that tendency, the training is designed to ensure that personnel fully understand how to utilize the software and procedures, and how every component fits together. Training sessions, which typically run 3½ to 5 days, start with the simulators, with a focus on operational simulation and integrating human factors, including teamwork, procedural discipline, communication and decision-making, to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Crews, already certified in their respective disciplines, test planned operations in a simulated, but realistic, environment to build situational awareness and gain full competency before being deployed in an actual field operation. Taking into account that every operation has unique challenges, various well-control scenarios allow crew members to put their technical expertise into practice while working with their team. This enables the crew to utilize their team competencies with respect to the well-specific drilling program, carrying out joint procedures as an integrated unit, rather than as individual contributors.

The OneSync software is integrated into the high-fidelity well-control simulators. Thus, operators and rig crews can work through procedures and adverse conditions to flesh out how they will use the software to appropriately respond to events on the rig and fine-tune the operations they will be managing to improve decision-making. Training sessions include fully-integrated debriefings, during which team members share lessons learned during the simulation, as well as on previous rig operations. In addition to creating an opportunity for sharing technical knowledge, this process builds greater communication, leadership and decision-making skills.

TESTING CONTINGENCY SCENARIOS

Prior to one MPD operation in Denmark, the crew tested five specific well-control contingency scenarios related to significant challenges that the operator had experienced previously on wells in the same area. Because of the extremely narrow pore- and fracture-pressure gradients and wellbore stability-related problems, especially in a weak area near the top of the formation, there was little room for error. The crew determined that the ability to manage a potential kick from the formation would be the most important component of the entire operation. To avoid kicks and issues, such as differential sticking, the downhole pressure profile would need to be managed very precisely.

Maersk Training’s high-fidelity simulators were able to mimic the exact operational environment with the anticipated operational challenges, including formation depth, mud densities, type of kick and equipment. The teams could run, practice and validate the procedures in a realistic, yet safe, environment. The simulator could be stopped at any time to accommodate questions.

In the field, the engineering simulator software component enables the rig crew and remote decision-makers to run real-time, what-if simulations and engineering calculations on site. By providing quantitative answers to technical questions that arise during operations—such as what parameters would occur at the surface in the event of a two-barrel kick—the software eliminates the uncertainty and subjectivity that too often lead to blind guesses. This functionality is enabled through the very same MPD control system software being used simultaneously elsewhere on the rig.

In MPD operations, leveraging integrated data for effective analysis and decision-making is also important. Historically, data have been collected during the operation and reported to the client at the end of the job. These traditional end-of-well reports offer little value for decision-making, because the knowledge has not been accumulated in a meaningful way. While analysis from previous jobs is available, access to this information is limited, and the data generally have not been integrated in one place with the same format. The OneSync platform can produce reports that present custom analysis of the daily data.

With an integrated software platform that spans all drilling processes, operators can gain more meaning from the collected data. The platform provides calculation tools that enable rig crews to create their own algorithms and program the software to post alerts—such as red or yellow flags—to the database, warning of impending drilling events. After a job is complete, the database can be accessed to analyze portions of the data that are relevant to prepare for the next operation and troubleshoot specific issues.

As part of its ongoing efforts toward greater automation, Weatherford, over the next year, will transition all of its MPD operations to the new software platform, which is being used extensively in the North Sea, Canada, the Asia-Pacific region, and deepwater Brazil.