Leveraging Digital Transformation in the Well Construction Planning Process

The well-planning process involves many parties collaborating and optimizing various design aspects to deliver the best well construction. There are still many challenges for a well-planning team to manage the process and formulate the best drilling program. Many tasks are cumbersome and time-consuming; ensuring coherency within various parts of the drilling program is also difficult. Digital transformation integrates digital technology to create new or modify existing workflows that can fundamentally change how we operate and deliver value. The oil and gas industry is expecting to redefine its boundaries through digitalization. Leveraging digital technology can act as an enabler to tackle various challenges, improve efficiency, and provide greater value in all aspects of the oil and gas industry, including a well-planning process. In this paper, the author discusses various examples of how digital technology is used in well planning and how it changes our way of working, improves working efficiency, and delivers better results. Cloud technologies provide a new platform for collaboration and break the working culture in silos. It also provides a new way to communicate, share information, and eliminate multiple data transfers and manual inputs. Cloud computations can scale the computing resource elastically, enabling simple to complex modeling. Engineers can simulate various scenarios more quickly to decide the best plan. Various automation, from smart input to auto engineering analysis, are used to minimize mistakes, provide real-time feedback while designing, and improve working efficiency. The use of big data and machine learning can improve the accuracy of engineering analysis and provide an advisory model that can minimize the risk and uncertainty during execution. All these digital technologies are implemented in a cloud-based well construction planning solution. Many other digital capabilities learned from other industry applications are also implemented to improve user experiences. Examples are a notification system, open architecture to connect to other databases and cross domain information, a digital review-and-approve system, traffic light validation system, multidimensional visualization, and automated report generation for the coherent drilling program. Leveraging the digital transformation in the well construction planning process through a cloud-based application enables the planning team to maximize the results by giving them access to all the data and science they need in a single, common system. The solution increases planning efficiency and enhances well designs through automated end-to-end workflows, cross-company and cross-domain collaboration, auto-validation, and integrated offset knowledge; this accelerates continuous improvement of well construction activities.