The global directional drilling services market has taken a big hit during this downturn. In terms of market value, directional drilling fell from $16.55 billion in 2014 to $10.95 billion in 2015, then shrank further in 2016 to just $6.71 billion. Most of these reductions were brought about by project cancellations in the low oil price environment, according to Rajashekar Lokam, Research Analyst at Mordor Intelligence.
However, after three consecutive years of losses, the market appears to be reversing course. By year-end 2017, the market value of directional drilling services had risen to $9.6 billion, driven by increases in drilling activity and deepwater investments, as well as by longer lateral lengths in the US, Mr Lokam said.
No matter these market dynamics, however – or perhaps because of such market dynamics – directional drilling technologies appear to be evolving faster than ever. Operators, pinched by budget cuts, are demanding improved accuracy and quality in well placement.
“As the operator is becoming more sophisticated about completions and oil and gas extraction, they are starting to realize that, yes, it’s important to place the well quickly, but where the well is placed becomes critical, as well,” said Christopher Papouras, President of Nabors Drilling Solutions.
“They’re now realizing all wells aren’t equal in terms of their productivity, and they’re getting better at defining what makes one well better than the other, which means that placement has another layer of sophistication.”
Continuous improvement is also driving companies to develop directional drilling systems that are fully integrated with advanced software platforms, as interconnectivity and the need for optimization change the way the industry does business. Automation and digital solutions, in particular, are helping “directional drillers and MWD operators to make quicker decisions so we can execute drilling the wells more efficiently, predictably and consistently,” said Kiattisak Petpisit, Strategic Business Manager with Halliburton’s Sperry Drilling business line.
Speed and quality
“Operators want to consistently drill as fast as possible with as few runs as possible and with no service quality incidents,” said Ginger Hildebrand, Operational Efficiency Manager – North America Land Drilling at Schlumberger. To deliver an industrialized performance in directional drilling, Schlumberger launched the abbl drilling operations advisor service in 2014. It leverages real-time downhole and surface data to recommend steering instructions to guide the bit along the well plan, as well as provide objective slide feedback, such as direction, length, toolface control, motor output and rotary tendencies, while steering operations are executed.
As of November 2017, the service had been used to drill more than 4.2 million ft across North American land operations, particularly in the SCOOP and STACK plays in Oklahoma, as well as the Midland, Delaware and the Western Canada basins. Over the past year, feedback from both operators and Schlumberger’s abbl command center, which monitors every well drilled using the service, has helped to improve and add functionality to the system.
While the application’s original focus was to provide real-time guidance, Ms Hildebrand said, recent developments have added analysis capabilities that allow drilling engineers to feed the results into their planning process for subsequent wells. “When things do not go as planned, operators want to understand why and how they can use the experience to do a better job for future operations.
“The abbl directional advisor is becoming increasingly sophisticated as it evolves. Initially the service possessed learned and forecasted sliding tendencies. During the next phase, rotary tendency detection was added, and later rotary tendency forecasting capabilities were included.” Other recent improvements have centered on making the service resilient against missing and intermittent data, as well as unexpected events like depth shifts.
Overall feedback from drillers, Ms Hildebrand said, has been positive. “It takes approximately an hour to fully train a directional driller, and it only takes about five minutes to set up the software for a specific well,” she said. “Users build confidence in the system with every well that they drill. Broadly speaking, we will typically introduce the abbl directional advisor as a service quality assurance tool first, and then only start crewing modifications once the operator and the crew are comfortable with it.”
The service can even be used to develop directional driller competencies and enhance performance. “The ability to closely and objectively review the night hand’s work can help avoid service quality issues and help establish a stronger collaborative relationship across shifts,” she said. “We had a case where the operator questioned a night directional driller’s ability to slide, and we used the abbl toolface control scoring to work with the directional driller to improve his skills.”
Although some directional drillers have expressed concerns about being “watched” by the software, the service was actually designed to augment the analytical skills of a good directional driller to help them consistently drill the operator’s desired well. “While the abbl drilling advisor can identify operational issues, more frequently the software highlights good operational execution,” Ms Hildebrand said. “It provides a detailed slide history illustrating the slide effectiveness to understand why some surveys are not providing the required dogleg severity (DLS) while others are.”
Alongside providing software that simplifies and automates workflows, Schlumberger is also developing downhole tools for harsh drilling environments; the goal is to increase reliability during directional drilling operations. In September 2017, the company launched the PowerDrive Xcel rotary steerable system (RSS), part of the PowerDrive family. The RSS is designed for use in high-profile directional drilling operations and provides a redundant inertial directional control that can be toggled with conventional control modes via downlink.
“This inertial mode is enabled by the introduction of a rate gyro on its direction and the inclination package, comprised of three-axial magnetometers and accelerometers,” said Juan Restrepo, Rotary Steerable Systems Product Champion at Schlumberger. “The PowerDrive Xcel RSS receives an accurate reference rotation in areas of high magnetic interference, allowing directional control. This mitigates collision risks of deviated holes on crowded platforms, as well as precise control in cased-hole sidetracks, ferrous formations and trajectories passing through the zone of exclusions, or where the Earth’s magnetic field projection on the cross-section of tool is low.”
The new RSS is also enabled for configuration so that it can be used as a tailor-made tool rather than one-size-fits-all, Mr Restrepo said. “The tool can be configured to maximize the curvature delivery in dogleg severity assurance applications or provide tighter control in long tangent sections. In other words, the optimal tool configuration is selected to match the directional needs, allowing both higher dogleg severities and smoother well profiles.”
Petrobras used the new RSS offshore Brazil last year to drill a sidetrack from a pilot well. This required the ability to geosteer into a complex turbidite reservoir with the potential risk of exiting the reservoir and to gyrosteer from a highly magnetically interfered environment. Because of the magnetic interference generated by the 9 5/8-in. casing, a regular magnetometer-based RSS would require about 15 m of spacing from the shoe.
This spacing had the potential to lead to a complete exit of the sandstone body, jeopardizing the well placement. The PowerDrive Xcel RSS’ inertial mode enabled Petrobras to sidetrack just 1 m below the casing shoe, achieve the full deviation from the pilot well after 16 m and build inclination from 82° to 85° with a dogleg severity of 5.33°/30 m, despite magnetic interference.
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