Managing Challenges for Digital Transformation Initiative in a National Drilling Contractor - A Case Study from Algeria
Authors: Arnaout Arghad , Bakhti Sarah , Thonhauser Gerhard 
Published: April 2019

Digital transformation is a process of applying all digital technologies and tools on current workflows to be able to deliver high quality information at the right time. The digital transformation of drilling will provide an unprecedented stream of high-quality information that has never been accomplished in the industry, through the utilization of automated real-time drilling downhole tools, data analytics and predictive analysis. Thus, it creates value, improves efficiency, further reduces costs and boosts performance significantly.

Despite the advantages of digital transformation, the oil and gas industry (especially drilling contractors) has been slow to seize the opportunity. There are many challenges that need to be overcome to realize its full potential for the drilling contractors. A coherent road map to build a successful digital transformation strategy will be addressed in this paper. (that is not only focused on assets, but also focused on how to create new revenue streams.)

A setup of a real-time digitalization tool based on automated rig activities detection technology is established in a national drilling contractor in Algeria and a measurement and monitoring process was started. Data aggregation is the first step towards implementing a digital transformation process.

However, the main task was standardizing and aggregating cross-vendor data streams. Breaking the data silos was required to move data smoothly from rig site to our digital records for a fast setup

Another issue is quality of data. Constant quality control checks of the received data ensured that the maximum value can be accomplished, which will consequently support in improving the awareness and decision process for the contractor based on this detailed information and following systematic procedures.

Also, company culture is extremely important to fostering the successful execution of a digital strategy. An approach of sharing relevant information between all members of the drilling crews on daily basis and using what is so-called "Hawthorne Effect", defines a continuous improvement process.

The digitalisation of drilling process has the ability to sustain a constant flow of information with the potential to transform operations and create additional profits from existing capacity. Clearing the bottlenecks in the data integration and analysis stages was vital for a successful digital transformation process.

This process enables real time reporting of drilling performance. This empowers the contractor to track the improvement and efficiency over time and find a performance gap to establish a feedback link to correct the deviations. The second benefit of applying such process is to by doing increase the utilization of the existing equipment and evaluating the best performance that crews can achieve with such equipment.

The eventual goal is establishing and improving the global process and workflow of monitoring the operating units for the multi-level operating team structure, by the means of high speed, digital data technologies over considerable slower human factors. In this paper, we will demonstrate all the tools and framework that have been utilized to achieve this goal.