2021 Volume 86 Issue 5 Pages 365-373
Drilling industry faces multitude of challenges ranging from resources constraint driven by activity volatility, increasing demand for cost efficiency and its expansion into non-conventional oil and gas drilling such as unconventional resource, carbon capture and storage（CCS）, geothermal etc. The geothermal industry in Japan encounters those challenges in addition to higher requirements for drilling efficiency improvement and health, safety and environment（HSE）accountability. These challenges call for a more accurate and extensive well construction planning solution, where operator can mitigate drilling risk and improve the drilling efficiency from the planning phase. The solution shall inherently drive efficiency well planning process where less resources would be required. An innovative well construction planning solution on cloud has been developed to cover all different aspects of the well planning and engineering workflows, delivering a step change in terms of capabilities and efficiency. The capabilities and efficiency are achieved through digital technology combining automatic engineering and validation, big data analytics, concurrent engineering, and project orchestration. Recently the trend of utilizing cloud based digital technology is increasing in the international drilling industry, and one trial project was conducted for a domestic geothermal well construction planning. The efficiency gain and quality improvement of well planning were evidently demonstrated in the trial project with the various positive feedback from the user. The trend of cloud utilization is expected to continue increasing.
