What are the benefits of investing in a modern well construction tool?
Every year, the Norwegian Petroleum Association holds a drilling and well conference in Kristiansand, Norway. This year is the 33rd holding, and due to infection control, this year it will be held digitally on 15th and 16th of September. The purpose of this years conference is to present technical and operational improvements related to drilling and wells.
Oliasoft has been invited to support the industry with our experience regarding sustainable software solutions for the future.
In recent years, the industry has been put under increasing pressure with everything from reputation to increased profitability and competitiveness. What is the road ahead for the industry, and how do we navigate today’s landscape?
Oliasoft has spent the past 5 years developing Oliasoft WellDesign and Thomas Selbekk, SME at Oliasoft will share our experience from the development process of a digital technology to an intrinsic and crucial part of the industry – and unravel how our software reflects the industry’s need for new technology.
The need for digital work processes is a result of tough times with tighter margins – where the industry’s best defense mechanism has been to streamline and increase the efficiency of work processes. Oliasoft WellDesign® intends to digitize drilling and well and it enables a number of new work processes for our users.
Automatic well design
Oliasoft WellDesign® is the first tool to cover all authority required well design calculations in one, integrated product. This integration enables automatic work processes and optimization based on given input data. Automation of today’s incremental planning processes will contribute to significant cost savings – and the engineer’s work capacity can instead be used to analyze optimal designs versus manual plotting of data. Several oil companies recognize the enormous potential of automation, and we have, among other things, a successful project in collaboration with major U. S. oil company on this.
Link to real-time data
Oliasoft WellDesign® is mainly a planning tool, but the fact that it utilizes modern software technology enables a link to other operations. During a drilling operation, Oliasoft WellDesign can connect to the WITSML power from the rig, enabling design calculations to be automatically updated based on real-time data. With this, it is possible to monitor well designs during operation to ensure execution within defined safety requirements.
A dynamic link between planning and operation can only be established with the use of modern tools, with APIs that trigger and enable data exchange. Both the authorities, operators and service companies will benefit greatly from such a pairing.
Link to 3.party systems
Traditionally, software in the oil industry is characterized as closed systems. Several new suppliers are developing tools built for machine-to-machine integration with other systems, constituting an ecosystem of integrated digital systems, which represents the core of value creation with the use of native digital solutions.
Oliasoft WellDesign® is built with open APIs that allow all other 3rd party systems to connect to our calculation engines. This enables a number of new use cases and Oliasoft has several ongoing projects in this area, including FutureOn and Cognite to name a few.
Back to the opening question..
“What are the benefits of investing in a modern well construction tool?”
Adopting modern well construction software realize a number of advantages for the engineers as users
- You get a modern, intuitive software that quickly and efficiently performs the necessary calculations to construct a well – which in turn increases the drilling engineers’ expertise and holistic perspective of the construction process
- You get a browser-based software that can be used anywhere, anytime, where data is shared immediately
- You will be able to connect to Oliasoft WellDesign from other value chain softwares via open APIs and perform critical calculations quickly and correctly
- You will easily be able to adjust the well at a detailed level from all modules within Oliasoft WellDesign, or via connected software
- You can trust that changes in one module will be immediately picked up in the other modules, which contribute to important and correct “management of change”
Through customer-driven product development and projects, we have made the 4 following observations that we want to share as key takeaways:
- Avoid data lock-in! Data must be shared to gain synergies in a digital infrastructure.
- Solutions that are cloud native are easier to work with than legacy systems that have been rewritten into cloud solutions.
- Good and sustainable solutions are not created on the sidelines – customers and users must be involved in development and testing to create solutions that solve business-critical problems.
- Complex processes require a lot of work to be digitized. So, be patient – stay positive – and put your trust in clever people. Dare to let go of old systems and procedures, but remember to ask critical questions along the way.
We wish you the best of luck finding sustainable solutions for the future!
