Smart Driller Indicator wins CIPPE 2017 Gold Award
BEIJING, China -- The 17th China International Petroleum & Petrochemical Technology and Equipment Exhibition (CIPPE 2017) is held on March 20, 2017, in Beijing. The final winner of the Gold Award for innovative exhibits is also announced at CIPPE 2017. CIPPE Gold Award aims to commend and encourage companies with outstanding contributions in the fields of developing new creative products and leading technology. For CIPPE 2017 Gold Award, the review committee consists of Chinese academy of sciences and Chinese academy of engineering academicians, and authoritative experts from CNPC, Sinopec and CNOOC. With strict evaluation for innovative products and technologies from well-known drilling companies, the committee has selected the Smart Driller Indicator (SDI), developed by Strategy and Planning Institute from CNPC DR, as the final winner, due to its unique innovation and superior drilling performance in the intelligent drilling field.
SDI is an innovative real-time driller indicator, which informs a driller whether WOB, rotary speed and mud flowrate are adequate for penetrating a rock in order to achieve more ROP and longer bit runs. The optimized bit working parameters showed and updated in the SDI are calculated by the soft-closed-loop optimization software, which monitors the real-time drilling parameters in rig-site by means of optical fiber (or RF), and recommends the optimized drilling parameters for the bit to penetrate the rock by maintaining an optimum relationship between ROP and energy input.
SDI has achieved many innovations, including quantitatively evaluating bit working performance, the optimum working parameters searching method for bit/rock interactions, identifying the various limiters hindering ROP, etc. Therefore, 10 national invention patents have been applied for five past years. In addition, seven software copyrights have been authorized, and five papers have been published in SPE and OTC international conferences. Meanwhile, SDI has been chosen as one of the winners of the 2015 E&P Special Meritorious Awards for Engineering Innovation, pioneering the drilling technology in China.
The performance of SDI in more than 50 wells in China, with footage of about 50,000 ft, shows that there are about 27.47% ROP improvement and longer bit life compared with conventional drilling habits. Additionally, since 2015 SDI has been deployed and active on 16 rigs in Southwest Yumen field, where the drilling performance has been improved with the downhole complexity and limiters significantly decreased. The application for SDI do not need changing current drilling system and additional tools, not influenced by well profile, formation type and driller’s experiences.
As an effective tool for achieving the maximum ROP, SDI is similar with the GPS vehicle navigation system, indicating the drillers to follow the optimum working parameters during drilling process. The field applications show that SDI is able to keep the bit working in the best rock breaking area. Meanwhile, it can also assist the driller to identify limiters (vibrations, balling etc.) as to improve ROP and reduce the bit dysfunction. With the broad application prospects, it will lead the drilling technology to digital, automatic and intelligent development in China.
