Drilling and Well Cost Optimisation Using Digital / Smart Technologies

By Naim Saddiq CEng, Managing Director: Oxford Well Engineering Limited

With the global oil and gas industry gearing up for action, a vast number of drilling & completion projects are being pushed through the initial planning (FDP) and FEED gates.

In the backdrop of current global energy crises, there is considerable time pressure to deliver reliable energy as soon as possible.

We must, however, remember to guard against common costly (wells) mistakes, which have historically resulted in huge sunk costs arising from overly expensive and/or poorly constructed suboptimal wells.

A lot of wells, which were constructed cheaper had to be worked over within the first few years which should not ideally be the case.

For future wells, it would be prudent for smaller E&P companies to engage “Well Optimisation Expertise” which could be visualized as a thread passing through ALL drilling project layers, thus yielding best results for the wells project costs.

From our experience, we noticed that most large operators tend to drill complex wells a lot cheaper compared to smaller operators even with similar designs and experienced people onboard.

Their success could be primarily attributed to extensive upfront well planning and design optimisation which is usually followed by data-driven, expertly controlled well project executions. In a nutshell, wells teams need to get it RIGHT the very first time.

Once the design is finalized, the well cost is written in stone even with best of drilling efficiencies you will have expensive wells.

From decades of experience, a road map of optimisation could be furnished which could deliver an all around well cost optimisation through use of digital and well engineering tool in a systematic manner. The road map could be summarised as per figure below:

 

In the road map figure above, it can be highlighted that well cost optimisation must start with specialist tech-based offset analysis which is the most important stage where firm reliable foundation of a drilling project is created. Once that is done, we must let data-driven knowledge and data calibrated engineering analysis to percolate through all layers of drilling project gates/phases.

During the well construction phase, data-driven Real-Time Drilling optimisation must deliver top quartile wells which are constructed cost-effectively, always ensuring that safety and well integrity remains intact.