Drilling seeking automatic control solutions

Abstract

AbstractThis paper addresses control challenges within drilling for the oil and gas industry. Drilling has not been modernized as much as other industries and there is still a great potential for automatic control. Heavy machinery is used to handle pipes and other equipment topside and in and out of the hole. These machines can be controlled remotely with a joystick. Very advanced tools are being used downhole several km away from the rig and these are often controlled remotely. Mud pulse telemetry with low bandwidth is used to communicate with downhole equipment. Drilling involves certain risks and mistakes may have disastrous consequences both for people and economically, e.g. a blow-out. Safety is therefore always the most important issue, and new solutions must be robust and fault tolerant. Extensive testing is required before being used in an actual drilling operation. Managed pressure drilling is a relative new method for drilling challenging wells with narrow margins requiring precise pressure control. Nonlinear model based control solutions and observers have been developed for this technology. This is addressed in this paper together with experimental results. In addition an overview of some other interesting challenges is given.