A 10x efficiency gain!

Maintaining a reliable drilling schedule remains a persistent challenge for mature assets, not least because the remaining subsurface hydrocarbon targets are getting smaller and harder to reach. Additionally, the number of constraints for well planning is continuously increasing.

At the upcoming Dig X Subsurface 2024 conference in Oslo in March, Principal Geologist Reidar Steinsland at Equinor will present a use case where huge efficiency gains have been documented by applying a newly developed AI-assisted well trajectory planning software (AIM).

AIM helps by suggesting different ways to drill based on a field’s specific engineering rules and constraints such as anti-collision and cooling.

In the use case, a mature NCS asset has 10 targets, 9 available slots, and 4 well designs, resulting in 3,600 potential combinations. Finding the optimal solutions for combining a slot with a target would require a vast amount of time and, involve taking some shortcuts if done manually.

Thankfully, such tasks are exactly what machines are much better at performing than humans, and with AIM, the job was done considerably faster.

In simple terms, the new AI-assisted workflow was applied in four steps:

Smart suggestions: AIM suggests different drilling paths for each possible slot and target combo. This was followed by coarse filtering of the options based on engineering experience.
Team decision: The Subsurface and Drilling & Wells people got together to pick their favorite paths.
Compare and choose: They then compared these favorites using a list of criteria to make sure they’re making the best choice.
Document and recommend: The whole screening process is documented, and the best paths are recommended to the management.

In general, this workflow resulted in more trajectory options within the design rules compared to previous well-screening efforts.

It was estimated that the AI assistance resulted in more than 10x acceleration of the screening process. The workflow further demonstrated that several slots are good candidates for multiple subsurface targets, providing the opportunity to optimize.

In conclusion, this tool may be viewed as a game-changer for well-trajectory planning for mature fields, and this is a talk that should not be missed!