In his keynote address
to the Simmons & Co. European energy conference in Gleneagles,
Scotland earlier this year, Schlumberger president of operations and
integration Patrick Schorn advocated an integrated approach to field
development embracing reservoir characterization, drilling and
production. Schlumberger has been involved in ‘integration type’
projects for many years, but is now taking integration to the next
level thanks to the key differentiators of technology integration, a
matrix organization, integrated services and access to drilling rigs, a
long time Schlumberger strength.
Schlumberger’s integrated
project management (IPM) business started some 19 years ago and now
represents a portfolio of multi-year, multi-rig contracts, some
involving challenging work in deeper and tougher wells.
Integrated
drilling services has been bolstered with the acquisition of Saxon
drilling in March of this year. Saxon’s land drilling rigs make for an
‘excellent integration platform,’ that is allowing Schlumberger to
evolve the drilling engineering practice from a simple combination of
discrete services to optimal systems, customized through extensive
design and modeling capabilities.
A good example of this is the
factory drilling paradigm of unconventional development such as Texas’
Eagle Ford shale where average production has plateaued, despite
increased drilling intensity, longer laterals and more frac stages. A
recent PFC study found that overall, 40% of all Eagle Ford wells are
uneconomical (and that was with 2013 oil prices!). Schorn also observed
that, ‘With less than 10% of today’s unconventional laterals logged, it
is hard to optimize completions.’
Schorn also took a tilt at another obstacle to optimizing the completion, the ‘silo approach’ adopted by many customers and the narrow workflows used by domain experts. In most cases, the characterization, drilling and completion data and workflows are too independent of each other, making information sharing hard. Enter Schlumberger’s Petrel-enabled workflow that combines different petrotechnical disciplines into ‘one seamless workflow.’ Other key enablers cited by Scorn included LeanStim for efficient frac operations and factory drilling, now available from nine rigs.
Schorn concluded that the industry needs to work
differently in the current ‘range-bound*’ price environment. A step
change is needed in performance, with integration as a key enabler.
‘This will require a serious redesign of our current workflows and
processes.’
Comment—IPM started
19 years ago, matrix organization began in 1998, drilling a ‘long time
strength’ so... what took ’em so long?
* Well it was range-bound in August!
© Oil IT Journal - all rights reserved.