Atypical planning process cuts drilling costs for Shell

April 3, 2000
A new planning process that defines an ideal well under optimum conditions, then works to eliminate all barriers to that perfect state, has cut drilling times and costs for units of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group.

A new planning process that defines an ideal well under optimum conditions, then works to eliminate all barriers to that perfect state, has cut drilling times and costs for units of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group.

The Shell group's "Drilling the Limit" program is a different approach from the usual process of incrementally improving existing procedures.

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"We look for new ways to improve performance," says Don Jacobsen, drilling manager for Shell Exploration & Production Co. (SEPCO), Houston, who helped put together the US version of Drilling the Limit in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) last year.

Woodside Petroleum, an Australian independent in which the Shell group has an ownership interest, kicked off the Drilling the Limit program in 1996. The Shell Group plans eventually to adapt it to all of its operations.

The planning program breaks down the entire drilling process in small intervals of 1 hr or even 30 min. "We look at each step and ask, 'How fast could we perform this job in a perfect world, with the right people and the right equipment at the right time, in the right conditions and with perfect safety?'" Jacobsen says.

"It's a simple concept, but difficult to execute," he says, similar to drilling an entire interval with only one bit and no excess circulation, then running casing with no downtime.

Yet, Jacobsen says planning for perfection has reduced drilling times in some cases to a quarter of what it took previously.

The secret of that success is intense planning sessions that bring together everyone connected with planning and drilling the proposed well-"third-party contractors, remotely operated vehicle operators, anchor handlers, engineers, and office staff," Jacobsen says.

Rig crews who will do the drilling are brought in during their normal days off to participate in those workshops.

In the first planning session 3 or 4 months before drilling is scheduled, Jacobsen says, "We tear apart the well and work each part in detail. We identify problem areas that prevent a perfect performance.

"We identify things we can do off the critical path that might otherwise get in the way-such as putting together a bottomhole assembly before it's needed. We found that could save 2 hr."

Workshop

A month before the well is to be spudded, all of the principals and contract crews gather at a second workshop "to drill the well on paper, with detailed times for all of the steps," he says.

The entire job is choreographed at that session-determining what equipment and workers are needed when and scheduling so that everything is available and operational when needed.

That planning process develops a clear, shared objective that maximizes partner and contractor contributions in a multidiscipline approach to drill the best well in the least time.

What it is not, say Shell officials, is an initiative simply to drill faster, which might imply a disregard for safety. Like virtually all oil and gas operators, Shell puts a premium on safety, especially in deepwater drilling.

"Everyone knows that better planning translates into better execution," Jacobsen says. And that means improved safety, with every worker knowing how, when, and where to do his job.

"Previously, the drilling engineers put together a well plan, with some input from operations. But they never used to solicit input from the guys on the rigs who do the work," says Jacobsen.

Under Shell's Drilling the Limit system, he says, "The guys on the rig floor provide a lot of input." As a result, Jacobsen says, "The rig crews are absolutely pumped by the performance and recognition they're getting."

SEPCO first applied the process in the Boris prospect, GOM, in an area where the best previous times for drilling wells were 55-60 days (Fig. 1).

SEPCO officials and their contractors envisioned a perfect drilling time of 16.7 days, then set a conservative target of 21-22 days. They drilled the well in 23 days.

"We have drilled four wells since, with the same Transocean Marianas crack crew and sustained the same degree of perfection," says Jacobsen.

They have cut their previous average drilling time of 6 days/1,000 ft below the mud line to 2 days. "That's a huge performance improvement. And in deep water, time is money," says Jacobsen.

"A 50% time reduction means a 30% cut in costs. That amounts to a $6 million savings on a $20 million well, and that's not chump change."

Of course, SEPCO pays incentives to the contractors and rig crews, right down to the catering crews, with increases the closer they get to perfection.

Shell's Drilling the Limit process has worked so well that it freed up time slots to lend out the Transocean Marianas semisubmersible rig-in the second year of a 5-year contract to SEPCO-to Chevron for other drilling projects this summer.

In May, Chevron will use that rig to spud an exploratory well on its Poseidon prospect with Texaco in Mississippi Canyon Block 772 in 4,900 ft of water.

That rig also is scheduled in July to spud the first well on the Hurricane prospect in 2,000 ft of water at Ewing Bank Block 1010, with Chevron as operator and SEPCO and Agip Petroleum Exploration Co. as partners.

The Drilling the Limit process will be used to cut drilling times on those projects as well, officials says.

SEPCO now uses the process on its tension-leg platforms, including the Ram-Powell TLP which recently drilled an extended-reach well of more than 26,000 ft in 45 days, says Jacobsen.

The process also has been extended to subsea completions, where it has cut times by 25-30% from historical averages, he says.

And SEPCO used the process in its onshore Javelina field in South Texas to cut drilling and casing time to 33 days from 73, for a $1 million cost savings. A similar change in well design resulted in a $3 million reduction in development drilling and completion costs in the Fandango field, say company officials.

The system can be adapted to any process with multiple steps, Jacobsen says.

"FMC has looked at the whole process for fitting together and testing equipment, to reduce the time and cost required," he says. "We've looked at it for the pipe-laying process."