Harness Oil and Gas Big Data with Analytics: Optimize Exploration and Production with Data Driven Models

Chapter 5Drilling and Completion Optimization

Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is interesting. But what they hide is vital.

Aaron Levenstein

Drilling is one of the most critical, dangerous, complex, and costly operations in the oil and gas industry. While drilling costs represent nearly half of well expenditures, only 42 percent of the time is attributed to drilling. The remaining 58 percent is divided between drilling problems, rig movement, defects, and latency periods.

Some rigs are not fully automated and no single service company provides the full set of data operators need to comprehensively understand drilling performance. Unfortunately, errors made during the drilling process are very expensive. They occasionally damage reputation and result in hefty civil and government lawsuits and financial penalties (consider the 2010 BP Horizon deepwater fire and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico). Inefficient drilling programs can have an even greater aggregate financial impact, causing delays in well completions or abandonments, unexpected shutdowns, hydrocarbon spills, and other accidents. There is a pressing need not only to improve drilling efficiency but also to predict hazardous situations that could have a negative impact on health, safety, and the environment.

Intelligent completions obtain downhole pressure and temperature data in real time to identify problems in the reservoir or wellbore and optimize production without costly well intervention. Sensing, ...