Fully Automated Directional Drilling Used on the Norwegian Continental Shelf
Authors: Carpenter Chris 
Published: November 2022

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This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights of paper SPE 204016, “Fully Automated Directional Drilling Is Now a Reality: An Example From the Norwegian Continental Shelf,” by Jorge Heredia, SPE, Julien Marck, SPE, and Sara Heller, Halliburton, et al. The paper has not been peer reviewed.

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This paper presents an automated directional-drilling process executed on a commercial well in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea, where an intelligent rotary-steerable system (RSS) completed a well section in a single run with all drilling commands automatically computed, optimized, and downlinked by a drilling-automation platform. The section was complex, consisting of two intervals requiring steering in three dimensions separated by a tangent section. Directional-drilling engineers onshore supervised the operation remotely. No override was required, and the automated system was able to drill the entire section while sending steering decisions automatically.

Advances in Drilling Automation

Two primary automation controllers that were used in recent steering-automation successes on the Norwegian Continental Shelf are discussed in the complete paper. Recent advancements in RSS technologies use downhole sensors, high-speed processors, and survey packages to provide the backbone for an autonomous downhole navigation system. This type of development enables an automated closed-loop attitude-hold feature. Once configured, the only required downlinks correct trajectory, therefore reducing the total number of downlinks required to steer per section and creating a consistent wellbore quality between wells. This system was applied during the tangent portion of the well discussed in the complete paper.

A second development is that of steering automation and advisory systems for deviated steering applications. These systems respond to real-time information from surface systems, including continuous inclination and azimuth measurements from downhole sensors and surface-drilling parameters. The real-time information then is fused with a physics-based digital twin model of the bottomhole assembly (BHA) to produce a calibrated steering model. Based on this hybrid model, the system combines control and optimization algorithms to reconstruct the borehole geometry between the last-available survey and the borehole depth and then provide recommendations for steering magnitudes and direction to meet drilling objectives while accounting for safety margins and drilling constraints. Benefits of the advisory system include reducing human error by removing unnecessary intervention, and automating calculations based off continuous real-time sensor information as opposed to the conventional method of requiring manual interpretation of data. The presented results illustrate the effect of these integrated systems on the improvement of borehole quality and placement and how the controller overcomes typical field situations successfully, such as challenging formations and wellbore conditions and changes in targets and steering objectives.

The drilling-automation platform allows the directional-drilling operator to remain onshore in a remote drilling center as opposed to being on the offshore platform. Previous challenges and risks associated with holding operations remotely are being left behind as Internet bandwidth increases and no requirement exists to rely simply on phone and email correspondence; instead, onshore operators can view computers and cameras located at the rigsite in real time.