Remote monitoring, elimination of software license fees and a dramatic reduction in hardware costs saves money and boosts efficiency for Operator
The Challenge
Faced with the need to increase efficiencies and reduce costs, a large operator in the Middle East began to question its traditional method of aggregating and transmitting its drilling data. The Operator had been coordinating services with multiple vendors, each with their own proprietary data formats, software systems and license fees, resulting in significant costs and time lost by users having to log in to and learn multiple systems. Then there were the costs associated with those systems. The Operator’s IT department had to maintain hundreds of servers for the different vendors, resulting in significant hardware and support service expense.
Adding to the problem was the fact that the Operator had to incur further costs for the transmission of static and real-time data that were sent separately by each service provider. Security was also an issue as data was often taken outside of the Operator’s network and sometimes out of the country.
The Solution
With the goal of enhancing efficiencies, increasing productivity and reducing costs, the Operator selected Petrolink to provide a single vendor solution for data aggregation, transmission and visualization of real-time data for their entire fleet of rigs.
As the sole service provider, Petrolink quickly streamlined how the Operator accessed, viewed and shared real-time data with their many internal departments so critical drilling decisions could be made efficiently. This process began by developing a single viewer that brought all the Operator’s real-time data together in one place that was accessible to every department, simultaneously – giving everyone from the rigsite to the office the same information, instantly.
To address the various data formats, Petrolink leveraged its leadership of the WITSML data standard, ensuring all data was in one language. This increased data quality and security, and allowed the Operator to easily deploy the data in 3rd party applications for analysis and decision-making.
To enhance communications between all parties, Petrolink then developed a secured, real-time chat system designed to increase collaboration and drastically reduce the amount of time it took the operator to communicate with users and vendors at the office and in remote locations, allowing engineers to make decisions in real-time to optimize their drilling operations.
Collaborative Geosteering Display
The Results
The numbers speak for themselves. On costs alone, the single viewer solution delivered a 100% reduction in software license fees. The IT department went from managing hundreds of servers to a fraction of that, resulting in more than 90% savings in hardware maintenance and support services costs. And with a single vendor providing real-time services, there was only one contract to manage and one company to pay, saving the company 80% in duplicate fees. Additionally, Petrolink provided a single cost per day fee structure, which eliminated the multiple costs, charged per footage or per hour.
Due to the success of the implementation, as well as other factors, Petrolink’s contract continues to be renewed with the Operator. They cited several reasons that support this ongoing relationship. Firstly, no other contractor has been capable of meeting the challenging requirements outlined in the Operator’s tenders. Second, Petrolink’s solution ensured all the Operator’s data remained secure, never leaving their network. And thirdly, the project manager credited the outstanding service delivery and innovative solutions the team continues to bring to the project.
The Petrolink service for me has greatly improved collaboration between drilling, geology and reservoir management by removing the minutiae of solving (or failing to solve and requiring Geosteering Support help) technical problems with well data transmission from source to destination.
Operations Geologist
