The operator’s offshore platforms faced growing challenges in the management of offshore personnel due to aging infrastructure and limited accommodation capacity. Drilling new wells and maintaining hydrocarbon production demanded significant staff resource, creating logistical and operational constraints.
Traditionally, SLB well placement operations required up to six personnel offshore, including directional drillers, logging-while-drilling (LWD) engineers, and gyro engineers. The operator sought to reduce the offshore headcount while maintaining operational efficiency and service quality. SLB was tasked with implementing a strategy to optimize POB, free up space for other critical activities, and ensure seamless well placement and drilling operations.
To address the operator’s challenges and facilitate the remote execution of LWD and gyro-while-drilling (GWD) SLB integrated advanced digital technologies with services from the Performance Live center. This approach eliminated the need for a full offshore crew, reducing the well placement team to just two cross-trained directional drillers (DDx) per platform.
In addition, the Performance Live center team used Neuro autonomous directional drilling to automate well trajectory delivery and downlinking, significantly reducing the workload on the DDx team and minimizing the needed directional adjustments.
DrillOps advisory also played a critical role, by modeling the formation in real time and providing the optimal parameters for drilling dynamics and rate of penetration (ROP). This ensured that operations were delivered at maximum performance and peak efficiency.
Together, these AI-powered technologies not only reduced the necessary offshore crew size, but also provided better insights and decision-making capabilities than would be possible with human expertise alone.
The results were transformative. Offshore well-placement crew size was reduced by 66%, saving more than 1,500 offshore personnel days across the operator’s platforms. This freed up critical accommodation space, enabling the operator to allocate resources to other essential activities. Despite the reduced crew size, there were no service quality incidents, highlighting the reliability and effectiveness of SLB remote operations and automation technologies.
The success of this project has established a new benchmark for offshore operations in the region. The operator now has a scalable model for optimizing POB and leveraging digital solutions to drive operational efficiency across the board. The lessons learned from this initiative are being applied to future wells, with the potential for broader adoption across wider global operations.
