Why is transitioning to the cloud crucial to the evolution of well control?

Well control has long been considered a specialist technical domain with a heavy reliance on subject matter experts (SME’s). Outside of these SMEs’ knowledge, calculations rely heavily on the single bubble methodology and its known limitations—such as its inability to take into account expansion effects, often resulting in unrealistic results.

But what if the accessibility of engineering process could be expanded to enable users of all levels of experience to perform accurate well control calculations more easily? Enter the cloud. This is a critical step for improving the performance, efficiency, and scalability of well control solutions.

Well Control on Delfi™ is the latest generation of well control software built for the cloud. By incorporating our Olga™ dynamic multiphase flow simulator, we’ve enabled the development of automated workflows, such as dynamic well control. This workflow automates the procedure required to circulate a kick out using the drillers method, by leveraging domain knowledge and a set of controllers to drive the procedure as it would be performed at the rig during an incident.

Transition to the cloud enables the parallelization of simulations, and can deliver significant improvements for performance and efficiency. For example, a complete sensitivity evaluation for a well can be run ten times faster when using the cloud-based Olga simulator, when compared to performing this process manually. Each workflow will consume Olga simulator resources from the cloud, with multiple sensitivities run for quality assurance. This scalability ensures that the technology can handle the demands of various well control workflows, such as dynamic well control, bullheading, managed pressure drilling, worst-case discharge, and dynamic kill simulations.

The use of the cloud also brings other benefits in the form of seamless collaboration between multiple users, full traceability of changes made to the simulation, the ability to rerun all scenarios in case of a change in design, and a reduction in manual entry, thereby reducing risk overall.

Explore how Well Control on Delfi brings industry trusted science to the cloud.