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_ Most industry professionals know that remote operations were becoming increasingly common well before COVID-19 impacted the oil and gas drilling industry. But then during the pandemic, everyone all at once drove to reduce personnel travel and visits to the rig site.
One solution for this was remote operations. A major service company recently reported that more than 80% of its jobs worldwide have a remote component, and up to 100% on a region‑by‑region basis.
Now, evolving remote operations is a firmly established trend.
It is a trend that has gone hand in hand with automation—from automation of data gathering to automation of action sequences. As the industry became comfortable with remote, in all senses of the word (real‑time operating centers [RTOCs] and virtual centers), ideas started to form for future development.
A synopsis follows of findings from an industry survey of remote operations in drilling which suggests various stages of implementation.
Where Are We Going? Established already are de-manning models such as directional drilling which encompasses measurement‑while‑drilling (MWD) data, mud‑logging analysts, geosteering, drilling optimization, and survey quality control. This is expected to be followed by:
Stage I: Logging‑while‑drilling (LWD), wireline logging, cementing, and pressure pumping.
Stage II: Establishing operating protocols between RTOC and wellsite while adding mud and fluids management, which will require significantly improved mud data (real‑time and at a high frequency) along with managed pressure drilling and casing running with rig crews operating with automation.
Stage III: Elevating remote decision making, enabling drilling engineers and other operating company staff to perform roles remotely.
Stage IV: A fully digitized operating system with a high degree of automation enabling remote geo‑driller (drilling the borehole).
How Will We Get There? The new software as a service (SaaS) models in the industry are remotely enabling drilling engineers to understand more than the driller sees on their drilling control screens. This enables the industry to reimagine how operations are controlled and executed. The drilling contractors and original equipment manufacturers will need to upgrade their human‑machine interface (HMI) to advise drillers in near‑real‑time and with operational context.
Some decisions will be relinquished to the SaaS service user in the remote environment. The current trend is leading to critical operations being managed remotely, subject to communications capabilities and routine operations which are happening on-site requiring a view of or under the drill floor.
If operations are to be primarily run from site, it will require an operations room approach where all the drilling and well data are shared with on-site experts in one location (but probably not on the drill floor).
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