Abstract
Drilling automation is gaining momentum and is a topic of high interest in the drilling community. In present drilling operations automation is still in its early phase. Several technology gaps have to be closed.
Use of technology to automatically identify various equipment and tools used in the drilling process and automatically deliver this data to control systems and to real time predictive modeling equations is considered to be a key enabler in drilling automation.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) for drill pipe has been developed to withstand temperature and shock/vibrations encountered in most wells. This paper outlines the technology development of RFID tags and status for application on drill pipe. Key challenges have been temperature limits, vibrations, wear and max tripping speed to pick up radio signals. Further the paper outlines present software applications and future possibilities in software development using RFID data as input. It will be presented how RFID helps in avoiding drill pipe failures, and how RFID will be used as an enabler in the future in drilling automation, predictive modeling and in real time decision making.
