Slide # 1 tells you why ROP Optimization is like boxing, ice hockey, football etc. It is a collision sport. That is, if you really want to make improvements, you must keep pushing and try new things to outperform the opponent – in this case, the formation.
But first, you need a plan. You do not go into the boxing ring without studying your opponent. You go with a plan, improvise, and try to come out better. Here, of course the best source of information for planning is from offset wells. And even if there are no offsets, the engineers are able to come up with rough estimates of ROP, WOB and RPM limits and ranges for the formation and the bit that is planned to be used.
Armed with this information, the system (an advisory software, for example) should push the driller towards achieving more ROP by increasing WOB and RPM (as and when appropriate) and back off only if there is a dysfunction or impending dysfunction. This is where all the models discussed in previous weeks come in play. This process, if followed at the rig site will lead to drilling the well at the limit and facilitate continuous improvement.
Goes without saying that all this can be automated. Systems can be built, with rules on how much one wishes the system to explore the parameter space (WOB and RPM) to attempt to increase ROP. Advertisement alert: We have the models in our back end real-time software. They work great with just surface data. We are open about our models, and continuously work to make them better. Contact us to integrate our back-end engine into your platform and build your automated system faster. Email us as info@intellicess.com
ROP is of course not the only metric to be concerned about. A faster well is not necessarily a better well. Hole cleaning, tortuosity, wellbore stability, tool failure, etc., needs to be monitored as well. In these weekly posts, we will go into a hole cleaning Bayesian network model next – and we promise – you have not seen a model like this (unless you have read our paper). So, stay tuned and enjoy the slides in this post for now.
Click below for slides on this topic: