Drilling ‘10: Third plenary: What’s the true value of automation?

An audience poll at Thursday's plenary session highlighted some surprising industry attitudes on automation in drilling activities. While 83% of the audience saw automation as a valuable tool that can drive safer operations, 13% said that automation was an accident waiting to happen, and 4% said it was not even worth pursuing.

The third plenary of the drilling conference, "Automation: From Pipe Dream to Practicality," was framed as a frank discussion on the true value of automation in the drilling arena, with perspectives from members of both the service and operator sides of the drilling business.

Mannina

In general, attitudes on automation among panelists and audience members were mixed. Pat Mannina, vice president and general manager of Oceaneering's ROV America's division, felt that automation and technology advancements hold a great deal of potential in improving the safety and efficiency of offshore drilling activities. He cited the advancements in ROV technology over the past 20 years as proof. "People were happy if the first generation of ROVs worked for one hour without incident. Today, one hour of downtime for an ROV translates to a great deal of lost time and money, and a lot of unhappy people in management."

Dew

The prevailing opinion shared by others was that most of the new tools being developed today brought advances in mechanization rather than true automation. Lyndol Dew, senior vice president of Operations for Diamond Offshore Drilling, said, "With today's technology, mechanization of certain processes has delivered the goods, but automation tends to create impediments."

David Payne, vice president of Global Drilling and Completions for Chevron, added that, "the notion of handing complete control over to computers makes many of us in the drilling community nervous. I think the idea that we will automate drilling in one fell swoop is overly optimistic."

Payne

That is not to say that automation of individual processes would not provide benefits. For example, Dew sees major areas for improvement in the automation of pipe handling operations, while Payne feels that pit cleaning could benefit from automated workflows.

Hermann Spoerker, head of OMV E&P's Well Engineering Group, expressed the concern that there is some confusion by what is meant by the term automation. "Are we talking about automating the drilling process, or automating the drilling machinery? That is an important distinction."

Spoerker

Spoerker also sees a need to standardize the myriad software systems used by different drilling companies before automation can really take off. "In terms of software standardization, we are in the pre MS-DOS generation," he said. "The personal computing industry only really took off once there was a standardized software platform in place. The same will be required of drilling automation software."

In response to the rather sizable section of the audience that believed automation was an accident waiting to happen, Payne said, "I think automation does provide an opportunity to improve the safety of operations, but it will take a more holistic approach to designing new tools, and greater cooperation between contractors and service providers."

"Automation seems to have created a shift in injuries from roughnecks to service technicians, who are on the rig to fix and maintain the new equipment," said Dew. "These technicians are not always used to working on the rig floor, so their risk for injury is fairly high."

The notion that automation reduces costs by reducing manpower has not been realized yet across the industry. "Given the need for so many high-dollar, specialized technicians to operate and fix automated equipment, reducing our costs via a headcount reduction is not possible right now," said Dew.

Payne added that he would be content if the industry could curtail the growth in the number of people needed onsite to assist in automated activities. "If the airline industry—which employs much more automation—ran like our industry, there would be more pilots than passengers on a plane."

A few final polling questions summarized the prevailing view of automation's potential and progress. While the audience saw several positive driving forces for automated drilling in terms of improved drilling efficiency (64%), greater safety (27%), and reduced workforce (9%), they saw many hurdles that will have to be addressed with gradual and concerted effort: high costs (30%), poor value realization (35%), training and competency requirements (15%), and a lack of  standardization among stakeholders (20%).