Improved tools facilitate centralized operations centers

Feb. 17, 2003
New web-based tools allow centralized operations centers to monitor and control remote activity, and these centers also provide sites for collaborative efforts for planning and data analysis.

New web-based tools allow centralized operations centers to monitor and control remote activity, and these centers also provide sites for collaborative efforts for planning and data analysis.

Inteq's Houston center monitors real-time data from numerous Gulf of Mexico wells to ensure reliable performance of tools and to optimize well placement (Fig. 1). Photo courtesy of Baker Hughes Inteq.
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For example, the oil-service company Baker Hughes Inteq established regional centers in Stavanger and Houston (Fig. 1) for its BEACON (Baker Expert Advisory Center and Operations Network) service to analyze live data streams from multiple remote drilling projects off Norway and in the Gulf of Mexico.

Anadarko's operations intelligence center allows experts at the company's main office in The Woodlands, near Houston, to work together in real-time with personnel at any of its worldwide operations sites (Fig. 2). Photo courtesy of Anadarko Petroleum Corp.
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Also Anadarko Petroleum Corp. operations intelligence center (Fig. 2) at its headquarters north of Houston allows the company to connect to all of its worldwide operations. Randy Couch, Anadarko's general manager E&P technology and planning said "The operations intelligence center was originally conceived to be more of a real-time operations set up but we found that it has enabled us to do so much more then just real time."

In comparing operating and service company centers, Wahlen wrote "At this time, the interaction between operator and service company operations centers is less clear. The economic benefits increase rapidly with the number of rigs serviced by a single center. Intuitively, intermittent drilling operations may be best served by a common resource provided by a service company rather than the operator funding a dedicated, but infrequently used center.

"Conversely, where financially attractive, a central operator provided center may bring all the required services together under one roof, but the broader skill-base available from the service sector will remain remote. In future, it seems likely that information communication technology will be used to link operator and service company operations centers, further blurring the boundaries between them."1

Centralized rig-site support

The idea of a centralized support is not new. Wahlen traces the first wave of such centers that use advances in electronic communications and personal computer technology to the early 1980s, with the most prominent being Amoco Corp.'s drilling command and control center and Mobil Corp.'s drilling data center that evolved from Superior Oil Co.'s real-time drilling data center.1

He said the Mobil center is still active under ExxonMobil Corp with upgraded tools, but the Amoco center was shut down in 1989 because it "…failed to meet the business unit's expectation."1

Wahlen ascribed the shutdown of Amoco Corp.'s center to both the inability of the 1980s technology to simulate real-lift drilling situations and to Amoco's failure to recognize the importance of process mangement and human-factor elements in its design.1

Keith Millheim, Anadarko's manager of operations technology, who was instrumental in building Amoco's drilling center, had a simpler explanation for the demise of the center. He said that by the late 1980s, the number of rigs running for Amoco had decreased to a dozen rigs from a hundred rigs in previous years, and most wells in the late 1980s were not the critical wells for which the center was built.

He added that Anadarko's facility, on the other hand, has multiple users all through the organization and thus is less influenced by a one-dimensional activity such as drilling. But he does expect the center to have a greater drilling role in the next 6-12 months, as more tools are added and especially in cases where it makes sense to intervene or change direction in a well.

But he also said the center has to provide easy communications for presonnel, and currently Anadarko is taking groups at a time through the center to make them feel comfortable with the facility and give them a sense of ownership in the center.

Millheim envisions that eventually the center might provide a continual background scan of all critical wells. This would include software that would send out an alert if it senses situations arising such as stuck pipe or other drilling problems

He said one of the center's upcoming uses will be for monitoring the drilling of a gas hydrate well in Alaska that Anadarko will be drilling with support of the US Department of Energy (DOE). The center with allow more people to view various parts of the operation without having to go to the remote site with its limited accommodations.

BEACON

Baker Hughes Inteq first tested BEACON in 1998 as a quality control service, out of Stavanger Norway, for its MWD-LWD (measurement-while-drilling and logging-while-drilling), surface logging, and directional drilling groups.

The center has provided services to North Sea rigs such a BP PLC's Mærsk Guardian and Valhall rigs as well as Norsk Hydro ASA's West Vanguard, West Venture, and Polar Pioneer projects and is capable of supporting 15 concurrent rig operations.

Inteq also said that off Norway it recently broke new ground by running its reservoir navigation services from the Stavanger BEACON center and Norsk Hydro's Stavanger office on the Snorre P-15 well and two deployments on the Brage field.

It said "Reservoir navigation experts modeled the LWD log responses, followed the operation closely, interpreted log responses, updated the geological models in real time and advised Norsk Hydro on changes in well trajectory to achieve optimal well placement."

Inteq explains that a huge amount of data is available and recorded during the drilling process for improving decision-making and identifying the proper course of action. For example, McGinley wrote that some highly instrumented rigs offer up to 2,500 automated sensor readings that can be read at speeds of up to once/sec.2

He added that combining these measurements with second and third derivative data such as d-exponent (DXC) and pore-pressure trends leads to more than 10,000 data values available for recording.2

Inteq said "the conversion of raw data to decision information can deliver extreme efficiency gains by taking multiple inputs and deriving a single output." For example, the center can convert several thousand downhole MWD resistivity measurements to a trend that in turn is used to estimate downhole pore pressure.

In addition to its Stavanger center, Inteq recently launched a second center in Houston to support Gulf of Mexico operations and monitor up to 10 active wells. The center has a distributed design with operators having a minimum 15 years of field experience. The operators monitor the data to ensure its accuracy, thus shortening the time it takes to notice problems with tools or other drilling activities, according to Inteq.

For data transfer, the Norwegian center takes advantage of the large fiber optic network infrastructure on the seabed off Norway, while in the gulf, the center receives data from satellites.

Inteq provided examples of operations that the centers facilitated. In one job in the gulf, the center smoothed the restart of a semisubmersible rig shut down because of a hurricane after downhole and surface sensors indicated the bit had entered an over-pressured zone. In this case the drilling had ceased, the well was plugged, the bottomhole assembly was hung off, and personnel had left the rig.

Operations resumed 1 week later with a new Inteq crew at the well site. But because of the onshore monitoring, Inteq said that its center immediately notified the new wellsite crew of the suspected over-pressured zone and drilling proceeded with close monitoring from both sites to ensure the well was drilled safely and efficiently.

In another example off Norway, Inteq said that its center provided displays, video feeds, and headset communications devices to maintain communication during a complex well kick off from a production platform that had many existing wells.

It said that on this job the onshore team ran continuous collision avoidance calculations while drilling continued in a continuous smooth and safe mode, resulting in the smoothest kick-off experience by the operator and also saving considerable time by eliminating the standard procedure of halting drilling while doing collision avoidance calculations.

Some other benefits of centers, according to Inteq, include optimized wellsite execution and reduced costs; streamlined knowledge and data sharing; more efficient resource allocation; reduced health, safety, and environment exposure; and 24-hr access to experienced technology specialists, analysis tools, and historical data.

Anadarko's center

Anadarko's operations intelligence center (OCI) includes four wall-mounted large screens that ease various collaborative efforts among its experts at its main office or between experts at the main office and any of its worldwide operations that it chooses. The facility started up in April 2001 when Anadarko moved into its new headquarters north of Houston in The Woodlands, although more capabilities for the center continue to be added.

Anadarko's Couch said that the center has been used for such activities as monitoring drilling in Alaska, frac jobs in East Texas, and logging and coring operations in the Gulf of Mexico that require real-time decisions by geologist and engineers. This has eliminated the need for the experts to go to the remote site; for instance, a trip to the Rocky Mountains operations site might take a minimum 3 days, Couch said.

But he cautioned that the center is not for replacing or usurping the authority of the on-site operations supervisor or foreman. He said the person on location will always remain in charge but now he has experts for council and guidance that can be contacted in a much more vibrant manner than by phones or simple satellite connections.

The center also provides a site for operational planning that may take place several wells ahead and is not intended to interfere with day-to-day activities. As such, Couch said the visualization environment functions as an additional and sophisticated support area that compliments, rather than competes with the operations.

He said for the center to continue to function, it must demonstrate that it adds greater value to the operations by providing improved cycle time, quicker communications or some sort of improved process.

References

  1. Wahlen, M., Sawaryn, S., Smith, R, and Blaasmo, M., "Improving Team Capability and Efficiency by Moving Traditional Rig-Site Services Onshore," Paper No. 78336, SPE 13th European Petroleum Conference, Aberdeen, Oct. 29-31, 2002.
  2. McGinley, P.J. "Leveraging Off Advances in Internet Technology to Bring Data to the Expert User On-shore," Paper No. 56687, SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, Houston, Oct. 3-8, 1999.