The oil and gas industry recognizes that there are significant gains to be had by the implementation of new digital technologies. For well construction planning, the goal is to bring together all domains, all data, and all engineering requirements in a seamlessly interconnected solution. As part of this transformation process, an innovative digital solution has been designed and implemented to cover all different aspects of the well planning and engineering workflows, delivering a step change in terms of capabilities and efficiency.

The use of traditional workflows and solutions often requires a lengthy, disconnected, and iterative processes, which can introduce a lack of coherency between the different teams and engineering processes involved, increasing the planning risks. Given the complexity and the number of disciplines involved in the well engineering process, a high-level collaboration is needed in new planning systems. Considering this as the basis for a change, a novel approach to connect all the well planning workflows demonstrates how the process can be optimized by combining automatic engineering and validation, big data analytics, concurrent engineering, and project orchestration.

The main benefit of a native cloud designed and deployed solution is the simplicity for the user because the architecture handles the interconnection of different workflows, data, and people, resulting in a more effective process. In addition, the solution always accounts for the latest data versions and automatically adjusts when any design change is made to the plan. Moreover, the cloud deployment enables complex big data analytics for offset well data analyses, thus increasing the accuracy of the results and democratizing the company knowledge. Automatic engineering validations are immediately confirmed against changes to the wellbore geometries, trajectory design, drilling parameters, bottomhole assemblies, bits, and rig specifications, among others, to deliver a more accurate and coherent result when compared to a disconnected model application workflow. As a result of this innovative solution, a significant reduction of individual software packages required to plan a well can be achieved. The system delivers a step change in in well engineering performance, with case study examples delivering both high quality results and efficiency gains of 50% and more.

This paper presents a full description of a new industry standard digital well construction planning solution that has the potential to transform the well planning process by providing a step change in collaboration, concurrent engineering, automation, and big data analytics. Furthermore, the cloud-deployed solution challenges will be briefly discussed.