This paper discusses ExxonMobil's approach to designing and drilling world-class development wells. In today's business environment, proper well design and flawless execution are essential as our investments increasingly rely on fewer, more complex, very large volume wells. To achieve success, ExxonMobil has always treated drilling as a core business. This means we value this area of expertise and hire, train, and retain this job skill to contribute to the success of what we do to provide value for our shareholders. We focus on a disciplined approach to drilling and completion investments, full leveraging of our global knowledge, development and deployment of people, technical solutions that balance minimum cost/appropriate risk and full-life-cycle capability, and flawless execution.
Introduction
ExxonMobil invests approximately 4 billion dollars annually drilling and completing wells. Excellence in drilling and completion performance is key to the success of these Upstream investments. For this reason, ExxonMobil has always treated drilling as a core business within the corporation and invests the resources necessary to create distinguishing competitive capability in its drilling and completion efforts.
All businesses within ExxonMobil have a set of key attributes; Drilling is no exception. These attributes lead directly to the business model which is based on:a disciplined approach to investment,a global focus,development and deployment of the right people,learning and implementation effectiveness,application, extension and invention of the right technology, anda focus on flawless execution of the right plan.
A disciplined approach to drilling and completion investments requires careful assessment of the long-term economics of the projects we pursue. This has led to a series of well and project planning processes that drive integrated assessment of investments by the geoscience and engineering disciplines. These processes create structure around the development of minimum-cost/full-life-cycle well plans. This approach also drives early and effective management review to ensure the appropriate balance of cost optimization, wellbore functionality, and subsurface knowledge is achieved.
Full leveraging of our global operations leads to effective development and deployment of people, as well as fast and effective learning and knowledge sharing. An integrated global approach to deployment of technical and operational resources ensures that the right people are working on the right challenges. It also provides the capacity to stretch and develop people to their potential in a controlled and deliberate setting. The global approach also facilitates knowledge. Centralized technical and operations support and management ensure disappointments are understood and avoided, and successful approaches and breakthroughs are communicated and implemented.
Technology is key to sustaining our distinguishing competitive advantage in drilling and completion. Well planning processes drive an understanding of the technical challenges and solutions that are needed to balance minimum cost/appropriate risk and full-life-cycle capability. Technical solutions fall into three main categories:applying existing and emerging technology,extending existing technical capabilities, andif necessary, inventing new technology.
In applying technology, our approach drives application of the right solution for the problem at hand. We do not apply technology that does not have the appropriate value versus risk and reliability. We do not apply technology because it is popular. We apply technology when it is the right answer leading to the most cost-effective solution for the life-cycle of the well.
