The Road Map to Automation

Abstract

Drilling Automation John de Wardt, president of De Wardt & Company and program manager of the Drilling Systems Automation Roadmap cross-industry initiative, has been working for the past few years with other experts to develop a comprehensive technology road map for automation. He is also a board member of SPE’s Drilling Systems Automation Technical Section (DSATS), formed to drive the development of automated well construction technologies. Based on his work with these groups, he expects that a series of breakthroughs in the next few years will lead to a full embrace of automated drilling systems in the next decade. “It is easy to look at it and say it is a nice pipe dream. But then when I discuss with people what is actually happening out there, I see data points that verify this is a realistic vision,” said de Wardt. The road map is a guide that companies in the industry may follow to go from automated components, or subsystems, such as bottomhole assemblies or weight on bit controllers, to a fully automated drilling system. While it may be a slow piecemeal approach, de Wardt said such a plan is needed to coordinate the complex ecosystem of companies involved with well construction. The industry reality is that it takes an amalgamation of equipment manufacturers, rig contractors, and service companies to drill wells for operators. A few majors, such as Shell, national oil companies, and integrated project management companies that own rigs may have such prowess but they are the exceptions. “I think it will go both ways because there will be some integrators that are going to see the value in doing it from the top down,” he said. “But independents are not going to go out and spend big on this; they are not going to go out and fund such a change like that.” One stop on the road map involves standardization. Using the Internet as an example, de Wardt said different automated systems need a common protocol so they can “talk” to each other and a control system, regardless of who made them. For instance, the work that DSATS is undertaking and the application developed by NOV using an open platform.