Facing Challenges in Rig Operation

Drilling industry is one of the most important or maybe the most important part of exploration and production of oil and gas. Accomplishment of objectives of oil and gas production is not reachable without development and organizing of this industry. For investigation of active onshore and offshore rigs conditions of our country it is needed to assess from the prospect of technology, equipment, technical knowledge, safety indexes and standards. Regarding technology of the drilling equipment, domestic rigs are identical to foreign up to date ones but because of recent sanctions, there is problem of providing spare parts that cannot be produced domestically. Most important challenges facing rig owner companies are as follows: In contractor section, the main focus should be at repair and maintenance of apparatus, up to dated technology and on time support. Reconsidering of maintenance methods, repair procedures and avoidance and fundamental repairs, reconstruction, quality improvement and expanding applicable training is important and training has to be effective and proper. In fact training has to be permanent and be a part of a managers tasks and one of the manger duty is to be trained and to train. Correction of purchasing methods and support section is important and contractors should buy that equipment with longer lifetime and up to dated technology. Facilities have to be provided in a manner that causes proper agility in pipe connections during trips, running casings and proper reaction in the case of pipe sticking and well flow. so personnel training should be up-to-date. All of the mentioned factors are considered as challenges of rig owner companies which with a proper and well-timed plan can lead to better drilling performance. Considering technology and up to date equipment we need well determined training for usage of this technology. Actually we have to search for methods for drilling industry improvement in different fields. One of these fields is improvement of technical knowledge which is pointed briefly as follows: -Training and updating human resource skills -updating training programs -effective system for human resource performance management -information circulation system and transforming experimental knowledge which we need improvement in this section -proper motivation system -attention to wage plans instead time wages and participate in work outcome -plan for protection of loyal and effective employees In drilling project management, considering the importance of project management and high risk of drilling activities, attention that project management is effective on those contracts that are turnkey type. Turnkey projects are planned according to drilling or repair and maintenance and completion of a well. So during the time that is set by contractor, from beginning to the end contractor is responsible for time loss and according detriment. In another words project duration has to be set correctly, so the project can be done in that time otherwise it is responsible for consequences. Unless true reservoir and geological layers are different from the ones proposed by operator in the overall plan. In another words in projects hidden or visible non- productive time is on the behalf of contractor. With that being said importance of correct project management can be noted for avoiding detriments and risks. Safety and environmental issues have special importance in drilling operations. For example in national Iranian drilling company there is a weekly meeting with the subject of HSE issues among managers and assistants, head of operation and tool pushers. in this meeting hazardous incidents are discussed and avoidance methods are determined. These experiences are come out as technical results which are transferred to all personnel. Also for further consistency rigs are inspected by HSE officers every once in two month that all of the safeties, hygiene, environmental issues are inspected and results are published as operational plan chart. After that tool pushers are responsible for correcting those errors and answer to operation quality control and inspection which after further investigation final report is sent to HSE management.

Standard and operation indexes

Drilling rigs assessment indexes are divided into two factors according to its activity on shore and offshore: visible wasted time and hidden wasted time. Visible wasted time is evident and known and will stop the work from proceeding. Like pump stop for repair reasons and waiting for commodity and material and waiting for water provision and so on but hidden wasted time that is really important and affects the cost is usually neglected. For example it is considered that rig is obviously working but it’s not working in the direction of objective and it is doing the same thing over again. This time shows itself like well improvement, low penetration rate and performance of drilling bit. This time is usually caused by equipment and commodity and material or human factors. Assessment of these indexes are the factor but we have to compare assessment with reality just in its own right time and wherever it is not matched to reality that is the time to find out the main reason. Integrated services are one of factors affecting work performance. In this method considering design, planning, commodity and material provision, implementation and son on all at one pace, work progress path and responsibilities are clear so there would be no unplanned job and removing shoulder from responsibilities in the case of any probable incident.

Author: Mohammad Ale-Khamis