eni E&P is supporting R&D of several technologies to be applied on its drilling operations in order to improve safety, reduce cost and extend operations feasibility. Among the technologies currently under development in the portfolio, three of them are oriented towards the prevention of blow out occurrence, the most dreaded risk in drilling activities.
These technologies have completely different installation modes, operability limits, activation systems and fluid containment methods. As a result, they also differ on the potential benefits that they can bring to drilling operations. The latter becomes a critical issue to tackle in order to support R&D department to define the most effective safety and economic strategy.
An exhaustive and effective evaluation method has been developed in order to benchmark these technologies objectively, analyzing together the twofold objective:
Safety improvement
Economic performance enhancement
The safety objective is addressed through assessment of blowout event prevention, measured through a probability benchmark with/without the use of the technology. Detailed fault trees are built for any possible drilling scenario, giving a comprehensive blow out probability reduction factor for each technology in different operative situations. Also, any uncertain parameter is duly addressed with probabilistic distributions, later combined altogether through a Monte-Carlo simulation.
The economic objective is addressed through a detailed time and cost probabilistic analysis, evaluating saving and losses in terms of operating performance (productive time) and risk issues (non productive time). The difference between savings and losses represents the net cost/benefit of each technology implementation.
The safety/economic models built for each technology are based on the same assumptions: a typical subsea well, based on a real situation, having an average complexity. All these models are further analyzed through sensitivity evaluations in order to test the robustness of the results and evaluate the effect of the different well characteristics on these results.
The combination of the economic and safety model is providing an immediate feedback on the main critical factors regarding technologies: operability, reliability, efficiency, and cost. By using such approach R&D department is able to better adjust its R&D funding and efforts to solve hidden criticalities and to propose the application of a new technology where benefits are maximized.
