Online Journal for E&P Geoscientists

Abdulkarim, Abdurrahman ^*1; Siddiqui, Mazhar ¹; Zar, Mobeen ¹
(1) ECC/EASD, Saudi Aramco, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Aramco spends considerable effort to plan, schedule, track, and report on activities associated with exploration wells. As the number of wells has increased, the cost and effort for these management activities has also increased.

In response, Saudi Aramco’s Exploration organization developed a new Escheduler system to assist in well planning, operational activities, drilling schedule optimization, to perform real-time impact analysis, and to enable prudent decision making. This system is expected to realize a multi-million dollar cost benefit while meeting or exceeding exploration objectives. The Escheduler system includes four modules: Task Tracker, Scheduler, Optimizer and Query Engine.

The Task Tracker allows users to initiate, approve, track and capture more than 40 tasks including staking, site preparation and approval to drill. Task Tracker alerts users, with color-coded status indicators, when any task is not approved on time and could delay the planned spud date.

The Scheduler allows Exploration to propose new prospects for drilling and have them approved by the signature authorities before they are forwarded to the Drilling Department. Scheduler works with a variety of support information like rig specifications, geospatial information, pre-drilling activities and prospect summaries to aid in the planning process. Scheduler also enables explorationists to reserve slots in the drilling business plan for prospects still under development. Scheduler has improved the efficiency and accuracy of the well planning process, allowing more wells to be scheduled with less effort and less chance for error. Finally, Scheduler has become a valuable collaboration tool, tying together people and information from the many departments involved from the initiation of a prospect to its eventual drilling.

The Optimizer allows users to optimize the drilling schedule over a specific time interval. It also performs real-time impact analysis of proposed schedule changes and reports any operational, economic and volumetric consequences. Optimizer alerts users when pre-programmed constraints are violated. During schedule optimization, Optimizer uses a varied set of metrics and constraints, including Saudi Aramco business rules, to ensure that schedule moves improve efficiency and abide by corporate rules.

The Query Engine generates reports on drilling plan data, providing insights into historical operational data as well as current plans.