Digitalization of Detailed Drilling Operation Plans and Verification of Automatic Progress Tracking with an Online Drilling Simulator Environment

Abstract

In the age of digitalization and automatization of drilling operations, it is time to move the detailed drilling operating procedure from its classical text format, only intended for human interpretation, to a structured representation that can be utilized efficiently by computer systems. The immediate benefit of this transformation is that progress tracking during an operation can be fully automated. To verify that automatic progress tracking can be performed with a digital version of the detailed operating procedure, simulated operations have been fed to the digital procedure and activity recognition software. The matching quality is thereafter assessed for each step of the planned drilling and non-drilling operating procedure. The detailed digital operating procedure itself is automatically generated from general descriptions contained in the operation program like tubular strings and fluids, and operational limits. The testing procedure utilized five operations generated on the fly by a simulator: running in hole and tagging bottom, setting liner hanger and releasing running tool, pull out of hole, spacing out a completion seal assembly in a liner top and setting and testing a production packer. The simulated operations were inspired by actual operations recorded in a real-time data server. The simulator runs remotely and is accessible through different application programming interfaces. The simulated data stream is very realistic compared to recorded data but offers the possibility to make variations on the simulated sequence and therefore test the reliability of the operation recognition algorithm. From a technical point of view, there are no differences where the real-time data flow comes from and what is the source of the data, whether it comes from a real-time data server, drilling simulator or any other source of the real-time data. All the simulated operation steps were successfully recognized by the system for the test case scenarios and proper notifications were triggered when required which proves the effectiveness of both the implemented system and the simulator. The new system is a unique approach to automatically digitalize operating procedures and activities and track them. The method also automatically warns when execution deviates from the plan and allows the instant deployment of best practices.