SPE Live Podcast: Interoperability as a Key Factor to Better Drilling Automation

Drilling operations involve many different service providers, each addressing specific facets of the well construction process. In practice, the drilling organization, including the support from onshore operation centers, addresses the coordination of the various tasks executed by multiple entities. Yet, the natural fragmentation of drilling operations into multiple services has slowed down the implementation of drilling automation solutions because computer systems from each involved party are traditionally not designed to exchange information with other systems.

The SPE Drilling System Automation Technical Section has therefore started an initiative to define standards for computer interoperability during the drilling process. This sub-committee is called D-WIS for Drilling and Wells Interoperability Standards. In this SPE Live, Eric Cayeux and Deep Joshi talk about interoperability as the key factor to better drilling automation.

As often experienced in a multi-disciplinary effort, it has been necessary to first define a common terminology. A classification of typical drilling operation functionalities was then defined. This classification has been structured in hierarchical control terms. Emphasis has been put on the generality of the proposed solutions in order to allow drilling system automation providers to reach the vision: “develop once, implement anywhere”.

Furthermore, in the context where multiple parties can provide simultaneous advice, a solution for the integration and conflict resolution of concurrent advisors is proposed.

The industry-wide workgroup effort has now reached the point where the developed solutions are getting tested on more complex use cases.

Speaker: Eric Cayeux, Chief Scientist

Moderated by Deep Joshi, Data Scientist