helmerich&payne_blog

With the high rates of penetration achieved by today’s drilling contractors, directional drillers have little time to make optimal steering decisions in a continually changing environment. Even when proper directional drilling decisions have been made, flawless execution of each decision can be difficult to perform. Performance related to drilling speed, drilling accuracy , and tortuosity are often inconsistent and greatly determined by the experience, skills, and even the current state of mind of both the directional driller and the driller. These factors lead to increased drilling and lifting costs along with wells having inconsistent hydrocarbon production potential. Watch out our video to know more about H&P Drilling Performance: https://youtu.be/Ee4BIOjTqWM?si=lusNyZpQe4vCKKcB . Today, directional drilling tasks are increasingly automated to deliver more consistent and improved performance in the field. Before automation can control the physical equipment on the rig, a foun...

  Helmerich & Payne, Inc. and Aramco made a recent seven-rig deal official at a signing ceremony last month. The H&P team was honored to join Aramco Upstream President Naser Al-Naimi in this momentous occasion. “We are extremely pleased to be working with Saudi Aramco and supporting their unconventional gas drilling campaign,” noted John Lindsay, president and CEO of Helmerich & Payne, Inc. “The success of this venture is a testament to the unwavering teamwork and innovative spirit of our employees. Their collective efforts, fueled by a commitment to excellence, have propelled our company forward and I could not be more proud.” Seven super-spec rigs were each awarded five-year contracts with one-year options and follow the one-rig award announced in August 2023 – for a total of eight rigs going to work in Saudi. Most of these rigs are expected to commence operations during the fourth quarter of this calendar year. The rigs will be sourced from our idle FlexRigs® sup...

The drilling and completion of oil and gas wells is a collaborative business, involving employees from many contractors working together. Well construction generates many documents that are shared cross-functionally between these different groups. A regulator may receive an as-drilled plat from a well planner , using surveys from an MWD operator , based on a pipe tally from a rig contractor. In this scenario, the person legally specifying the well location has likely never physically seen the wellhead or the equipment used to define the location. The regulatory database might later be used by a different operator for identifying offset wells on a nearby drilling program, further confounding matters. While document sharing is critical for successful well construction, there is often little opportunity for verification before use or transmission to another party. Watch the Video to know more about us: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGdKCAWtSxM A review of documents related to well const...

When drilling in congested fields, there is significant danger of catastrophic collisions with an existing (offset) wellbore. Apart from the economic damage of destroying two valuable wellbores , a collision may also result in a health, safety and environmental event. That is why many operators maintain anti-collision policies aimed at reducing the risk of such events. These policies define the safe distance that must be maintained between two wellbores to increase the separation factor (SF) . To increase the SF between a planned wellbore and its offset wells, the planned wellbore can sometimes be moved or shortened. However, these modifications to the well plan can result in suboptimal drainage and field development, stranded reserves, added drilling complexity or additional directional work. Instead of moving or shortening the planned wellbore, a more economical approach is to increase the positional accuracy by correcting survey measurements . The higher the confidence in their pos...

You plan your well to be safe, but when deviations from plan inevitably occur an updated analysis must be performed to confirm that the new execution plan is still safe. Traditional risk management processes can sometimes work against your desired outcome by being inefficient and creating frustration. They are also dependent on human variables that require more support and can have a high level of variance or bias. H&P Collision Avoidance provides frustration-free anti-collision analysis that does not compromise time to target due to decision delay and removes the de-manning barrier required by traditional collision avoidance systems. BY AUTOMATING SPEED , QUALITY, AND SAFETY H&P HELPS REDUCE TIME TO TARGET AND HUMAN VARIABILITY HOW DOES IT WORK? Prior to drilling, Collision Avoidance is configured with well plans, survey programs, and all wells to be avoided. While drilling, H&P Collision Avoidance monitors the Bit Guidance System for any indication of a new convergence...

Tighter well spacing, multi-well pad designs, and longer laterals create drilling conditions with higher collision risk and the need for greater positional accuracy. Using high-accuracy In-Field Referencing (IFR) models will improve anti-collision separation factors (SF) by as much as 60% as compared to main field magnetic models used in standard MWD surveying. This not only reduces collision risk , but also enables more accurate well placement . IFR does NOT require additional downhole tools, on-site personnel, or rig time. IN-FIELD REFERENCING (IFR) IFR is an industry-recognized, low-cost method for reducing wellbore positional uncertainty associated with MWD surveying. Applying IFR can significantly increase the SFs for wells drilled in congested fields. While H&P survey corrections do not require re-entry/re-surveying old wells, that option is available to further reduce uncertainty of previously drilled wells in congested fields. Higher SFs will require fewer dispensations ...