This paper presents the efforts made by a service company during the past thirty years to participate in the development of offshore activities, by continuously meeting technical challenges in the monitoring of drilling, testing and production of offshore wells. Offshore operators have long recognized the need for a maximum of drilling and production data of the highest possible quality. Today's stringent requirements for increased safety, environmental protection and minimum cost have increased the importance of data quality and are being applied worldwide.
On site real-time data aids offshore development : many case histories have demonstrated how the use of rig site data acquisition computers provides geologists and drillers with valuable data from which rapid and efficient decisions could be made a1 the drill site. Surface data logging is a unique opportunity to obtain direct evidence of oil as well as recording all main well events; offshore constraints have speeded up the development of on-site data storage and offshore-onshore teletransmission.
Technical advances applied to surface and down hole equipment enable efficient appreciation of onshore exploratory wells : once a system is installed to acquire, monitor and transmit data during the drilling phase, it is convenient to also use it during the testing phase. The quality of the monitoring of well testing activity relies on the ability to obtain accurate bottom hole data in real-time, which can be difficult while running a DST. Newly available technical advances help in solving such problems, as well as improving the quality of pressure measurements and optimizing the cost of the test by reducing its overall duration.
We present here an overview of advances in information technology and remote sensing by a particular service company that we believe have had a significant impact in offshore drilling, well testing and production. These innovations have been developed over the past 30 years and are being implemented worldwide. The general aim of these technological refinements has been to close the decision loop that is to increase the reliability of data and shorten the time required to make critical decisions.
Mud Logging, sometimes referred to by the modern term of Surface Data Logging (SDL) provides the only broad-based method to combine geological and drilling data in real time. This provides a unique opportunity to obtain direct evidence of oil and gas as well as recording all main drilling events. SDL is an evolutionary step beyond basic mud logging services, recovering transient drilling and geologic information to allow better 'tuning' of the well construction process for highest efficiency. A major component of SDL is the effort to simplify, as much as possible, the presentation of ever-more complex operating conditions, while reducing the need for operator intervention to understand the nature of well events.
