Energy companies and service providers are continuing to expand the use of artificial intelligence (AI) across drilling and well operations, targeting gains in efficiency, planning, risk management and decision-making.

ADNOC expands AI-enabled drilling support

ADNOC, supported by SLB, has deployed its AI-enabled Real-Time Operations Center (RTOC) platform across its fleet of more than 120 offshore and onshore drilling rigs.

The service is designed to ensure faster and more coordinated monitoring, analysis and management of ADNOC’s drilling operations across its offshore/onshore assets. 

The RTOC is claimed to allow teams of engineers to support two to three times more rigs while maintaining effective oversight.

It uses automated dashboards and “AI-powered performance insights” to convert large volumes of drilling data to clear, actionable information. ADNOC says that reporting cycles that previously lasted days can now be completed within hours.

RTOC also uses real-time rig data to identify potential issues before they escalate. This is said to help shorten incident response times by four to 12 hours, avoiding one to two days of rig downtime.

The service, incorporating SLB’s DrillOps intelligent well delivery and insights services, groups together live rig data from across drilling operations into a single environment.

Asset and drilling teams gain a real-time picture of activity across the rig fleet, which is designed to help them identify risks earlier, improve coordination and take decisions more quickly, the company said.

The combination of operational data, advanced analytics and AI-driven insights, allows tasks that previously involved one full day of analysis to be completed within minutes, ADNOC added.

“DrillOps…deployed within ADNOC’s sovereign cloud environment…provides the scalable digital foundation for AI-enabled workflows across one of the industry’s largest rig fleets and supports the continued progression toward more autonomous operations,” said Rakesh Jaggi, president of digital with SLB.

The deployment demonstrates how operators are increasingly using AI and real-time analytics to manage large rig fleets while reducing the manual workload on drilling teams.

AGR, THF target well engineering workflows

In another development, AGR and THF Engineered Solutions have agreed to jointly investigate use of engineering-led AI to support well planning, assurance and well delivery.

AGR brings more than 35 years of well engineering and project delivery experience. And THF's AI-enabled workflow platform, WellPhase, is designed to help operators and engineers identify operational risks earlier, improve planning, cut time spent reviewing historical well data and “deliver wells more safely and efficiently.”

The collaboration follows an offset well pilot involving AGR's well specialists.

Using WellPhase and its Engineering Logic and Learning Intelligence System, large volumes of historical well information can be swiftly analyzed and transformed into structured engineering insights, AGR said.

“We see an opportunity to unlock greater value from historical well data for clients, freeing up engineering time from manual processes to strengthen planning quality and improving consistency in well delivery across projects," said Lynden Duthie, managing director of AGR's Well Management business.

The partners will initially focus on offset well reviews, but they see opportunities to extend their service across a broader range of well engineering, assurance and operational processes, including standards compliance, well operations planning and regulatory assurance.

The initiative reflects growing industry interest in using AI to extract engineering insights from historical well data and apply them to future planning and risk assessment.