The E&P industry is a highly technical and complex world which is inhabited by skilled professionals of many different specializations and backgrounds working all over the globe. In order for an organization to perform effectively, it is very helpful to have a shared view of that world and a common vocabulary to describe its artifacts, processes and challenges. Over the past two years, we have developed a multi-faceted taxonomy that describes the realm of technical services in the upstream E&P domain. It comprises the areas of E&P disciplines, application methods and environments, technical services, and problem diagnoses. This taxonomy is finding wide use within our technical communities and has been embodied into computer-based applications in the areas of collaboration (workspaces and wikis), knowledge capture, expertise identification, field technical support and "smart" enterprise search. This paper discusses our methodology in establishing and reviewing the E&P taxonomy within a large technical community and how we are applying it to solve real-world business problems.

This paper presents the results and lessons learned to improve the performance while drilling the 36-in tophole sections in the Culzean field field HPHT development. Seven 36-in sections were drilled in a batch sequence with less than four days between wells. This presented a challenge in quickly identifying operational and equipment changes necessary to improve performance in each subsequent well. The first well was drilled with no operational issues; however, the rate of penetration (ROP) was lower than had been expected for this area. Borehole inclination increased in the following two wells and required significant reaming to reduce the inclination observed. Damage was also observed to the 26-in × 36-in Hole Opener, suspected to be due to the additional reaming work. As the reaming impacted operational efficiency and equipment, a re-design of the bottomhole assembly (BHA) was initiated. To maintain verticality without the need to backream a 17.5-in Rotary Steerable System (RSS) was added between the 17.5-in Bit and the 26-in × 36-in staged Hole Opener on the fourth well. The RSS system was then used in this configuration for the remaining three wells, resulting in a 24% improvement in drilling performance over the baseline well.

In large global organizations, experts who collaborate with their colleagues in the Digital Oilfield of the Future (DOFF) are geographically dispersed and mobile. Their time is precious and they cannot readily be distracted from their primary functions to participate in traditional knowledge-capture activities. Therefore, it is extremely desirable to automatically identify these experts, capture and codify their knowledge, and provide access to them from anywhere in the world at the time their knowledge is needed. This paper describes a new approach to this challenge.We investigated a number of approaches including a prototype system to automatically identify communities of interest, capture and index the electronic documents relevant to the community of interest, and populate a globally accessible "knowledge space." This knowledge space provides a mechanism to access the relevant experts in real time using location-/presence-aware collaboration tools.We evaluated this method in the context of establishing a Center of Excellence for Sand Control Completions. In establishing this Center, we began using conventional techniques. This initiative, however, was also viewed more strategically -as a vehicle for establishing "a new way of doing business," and it also served as a platform for testing approaches that would allow us to rapidly deploy the solution to other domains. This exercise demonstrated that significant improvements can be made in collecting, organizing and disseminating actionable knowledge from a dispersed community of technical experts. It also provides a real-time mechanism for leveraging the implicit knowledge of these experts in a globally mobile workforce. This has significant relevance in the DOFF arena as it enables an organization to "know what it knows" with less effort than traditional knowledge management and collaboration tools.

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