Modernize Execution Phase of Drilling Process in Offshore Brownfield (Gulf of Thailand) to an Overlapped Environment Using Digital Solution
Authors: Yuhun P. , Roenthon H. , Laitrakull K. , Boonmeelapprasert C. , Tungthansamma D. 
Published: October 2023

The main objective of this work is to utilize digital solutions to break down silos of a well-factory drilling workflow and to improve decision quality on time with data driven through the entire value chain during the execution phase of drilling operations. The required data integration, visualization, and decision analysis features were created as a collaborative tool for subsurface and drilling teams to efficiently work together on the same platform – minimizing recycled work and development costs while maximizing the returns. The application encompasses four primary features: (1) Project Overview and Assessment, (2) Performance Monitoring Dashboard (Project & Well), (3) Real-time Reserves Estimates, and (4) Operational Issue Resolution Trees. These features were developed to foster a culture of overlapped work environment, deviating from a linear process, and promoting agility to accommodate the high drilling volume. Through our findings, we have determined that the tangible benefit of this application lies in enhancing decision-making quality, resulting in a reduction of rathole sections across 100+ wells, equating to an annual cost savings of approximately $1.5 million. The reduction of nonproductive activities also sustainably reduced CO2 emissions. The soft benefit is to lower the team's recycled work on (1) reserves calculation and review that happens back-and-forth during operation, (2) post-drilled reserves confirmation, and (3) project lookback for 4-10 hours/engineer/project. In addition, the misalignment between two teams which often have different goals has been transparently solved - the subsurface team inclines to drill deep for reserves while the drilling team focuses on cost saving (E.g., shortening total depth or TD). From the lessons learned, we found that data preparation is a critical factor for the project's success. We surprisingly discovered that the drilling cost structure and daily drilling report were not in a structure and data-preparation effort was tremendously required.

The application and new ways of working were developed by a new approach – design thinking with scrum (Agile form). Well-factory drilling workflow was reviewed to identify pain points and ideated the expected improvement by subsurface and drilling teams during a design thinking session. Based on the priority and impact, the first-phase product was chosen to focus on the execution phase of a well-factory drilling process. The real-time reserves, development cost, and conventional drilling issues with the possibility of success in the Gulf of Thailand (GoT) were studied and extracted into a structured database as an effort of data preparation. During application development, the scrum methodology was applied. The tasks were divided into small sprints (2-week timespan). Each sprint was planned, tested, approved, and retrospective by relevant stakeholders to ensure the user centric. In a total of 14 sprints, the application was built to streamline and transform our linear well-factory drilling workflow (execution phase) to the overlapped process to minimize nonproductive work and invigorate data-driven decisions.

This project exemplifies the operational excellence of using digital solutions combined with design thinking and scrum methodology to handle the high volume of drilling development in GoT with data driven. This streamlined effort of well-factory drilling workflow enhances collaborative efficiency among parties and decision quality by increasing the chance to de-risk unnecessary investments but maximize returns. Additionally, this application can be extended to the shale gas development process which similarly relied on dense drilling operations.