New Version of IADC Daily Drilling Report Significantly Increases Granularity, Provides Opportunity to Collaborate Using a Common Digital Format Available to Purchase

The International Association of Drilling Contractors (IADC) Daily Drilling Report (DDR) is used on more drilling rigs worldwide than any other reporting system. The original version developed mid-last century (Killalea 2005) has not been routinely updated to accommodate the industry needs, causing its full potential to be unrealized. IADC launched the DDR Plus™ project in 2018 to unlock greater value by bringing it in-line with 21^st century technologies.

An in-depth industry survey identified major user requirements for an updated DDR. IADC's Advanced Rig Technologies (ART) Drilling Controls Systems (DCS) subcommittee focused on two areas: updating the Operations code set used to record activities at the rig site and developing a standard digital description of the report leveraging modern, XML-based industry standards.

This paper describes the approach IADC took to successfully update the IADC DDR, from identifying a concept using industry input and scope debate to the development of the final product.

The IADC DDR Plus is fully backward compatible with previous versions of the report, while it adds four additional layers of codes to increase granularity significantly. The industry-standard Wellsite Information Transfer Standard Markup Language (WITSML) data exchange standard, developed and maintained under Energistics (Pickering et al. 2009), was adopted as the basis for the report's digital description. Where necessary, WITSML was adapted to the needs of the DDR Plus. Combining the WITSML data transfer protocol and the IADC DDR Plus code structure allows users to integrate real-time data into their digital DDR.

The new IADC DDR Plus provides users with the opportunity to standardize on an industry-collaborated solution. As companies aim to be more competitive in today's drilling market, the new DDR Plus provides greater visibility of their operations and can lead to more in-depth analysis of well construction cycles and reductions in invisible lost time. The standard format provides opportunities for increased industry collaboration and benchmarks where they wish to compare data using the digital description's more detailed standard format. The DDR Plus lends itself to automated reporting from rig sensors, thereby reducing the manhours necessary for data input.