Egypt's Western Desert is known to be a highly complex and difficult drilling environment. Drilling in this area suffers from multiple geological risks related to formation dip and hardness, faulting, interbedding, and abrasive lithology. These conditions have typically caused drilling problems and costly delays in wells delivery. Combined with the geological difficulties, differences in the implemented drilling practices and operational procedures have led to inefficiencies and the loss of some knowledge transfer among different drilling activities and field operations.

For a proof of concept in one of its fields, Khalda endorsed a drilling automation and operations benchmarking strategy to improve the well delivery time in one of its Western Desert fields. The strategy focused on on-bottom drilling activity as well as off-bottom practices and flat-time activities. One part of this strategy endorsed a real-time automated drilling optimization workflow for the on-bottom drilling activities whereby the implementation of a change-point algorithm dictates the optimum drilling parameters to obtain the best possible rate of penetration (ROP) within the rig and drilling assembly constraints and while operating within the safe drilling dynamics window for the assembly. This approach yields the optimum ROP and prevents any possible downhole equipment failure or premature bit damage. The other part of the strategy involved benchmarking the different rig activities while drilling or doing other mechanical operations to gauge the activity of the current well compared to the offset well. This highlights any inefficiencies that can be immediately overcome, areas of improvement, and key learnings for future optimization or implementation.

This strategy was implemented in a deep gas development well in a challenging Western Desert field with known problematic offsets. The results showed a step change in well delivery whereby the well finished 3 days ahead of plan and 7 days ahead of the offset well. The real-time automation technique for drilling optimization managed to show 24% on-bottom ROP improvement in one section, enabled completing another section with a one run less than offset, and managed to mitigate the harsh drilling dynamics to prevent downhole equipment incidents. Also, the activities benchmarking helped to develop standard drilling practices that reduced inefficiencies in off-bottom drilling activities by 50% and managed to highlight key learnings and areas of development for future wells. These results helped in validating the proof of concept set at the beginning of this pilot.