Abstract
Drilling and Workover activities generate a lot of information that can be further used to improve the optimization of future activities and reduce: costs, drilling time and the time drilling engineers require to prepare a drilling program. To address this concern, Saudi Aramco developed the Well Planning Engineering Integrated Tools (WellPlanET). The well planning process is the most critical activity during drilling and completion. It starts by capturing the requirements from Exploration & Reservoir Engineering, and ends with a drilling program outlining the drilling execution plan. Supplements and revisions of the original plan may occur during the execution. This planning process involves consideration of many data types, including: formation pressures, offset well data, reservoir location, time, cost, etc. Overlooking any single data aspect could lead to severe drilling problems and time losses, especially for an Oil & Gas Operator like Saudi Aramco, where the Drilling & Workover agenda includes a large number of wells, of different types, and the operational involvement of many stakeholders.
For that reason, Saudi Aramco has recently commissioned a new Well Planning Engineering Integrated Tools (WellPlanET) environment as a one box solution for drilling engineers to facilitate, plan, manage and streamline the well design in a simple, yet smart way. This involves a new re-engineering D&WO Planning Systems environment and workflows from desktop- based to a more integrated web-based environment that employs Aramco data repositories (structured, unstructured, file systems, etc.), application portfolio (in-house, vendor, real-time, historical, Drilling, Exploration, PE, etc.) and workflows to deliver users requirements and address the Drilling & Workover strategic goals and plans. It also provides a systematic way of generating, validating, simulating and optimizing the Drilling Program during both pre-drilling, execution and post-drilling phases.
WellPlanET is a comprehensive integrated knowledgebase that ultimately facilitates well planning engineering, and advanced well design optimization. The system automates capturing all Drilling Program planning data (over 14 different data types such as Trajectory, Mud designs, Wellhead designs, etc.) in a structured manner to establish a complete integrated well planning repository to enable many advanced engineering modules such as Prediction, Simulation and Artificial Intelligence analysis features, using historical and planning data with full integration with key industry standards systems such as Geo- Pressure & Geomechanics analysis tools, Drilling Fluids and Well Hydraulics optimization tools, BHA/Wellhead/CrossSection designing tools to optimize the overall drilling program.
This paper shares Saudi Aramco’s experience in building and deploying WellPlanET as a smart and efficient way of generating the drilling well program.
