Slide Drilling Automation System Optimizes ROP to Achieve Desired Tool Face Control

Abstract Drilling rigs running conventional bottom hole assemblies including a mud motor must slide drill to steer and adjust the trajectory of the wellbore. Several variables, such as the well plan and rotary trends, can alter the well path and contribute to significant time spent slide drilling, making slide performance critical to overall operations cost. Slide drilling performance is largely dependent on two key factors: adjusting auto driller parameter setpoints along with the top-drive quill position throughout the on-bottom portion of a slide. Today, a directional drilling automation system can successfully execute the entire slide drilling process, including both the off-bottom and on-bottom sequences; however, the management of auto driller parameter setpoints has just recently been integrated into the automated directional drilling system as the final piece of the slide process to become automated. This was done to eliminate dependency on humans to continuously push performance, improve consistency, allow remote operating centers greater control of slide performance in the future, and create a more autonomous product requiring fewer button presses. Several metrics were developed to track current slide performance and assist with setting appropriate values for the drilling parameter setpoints during each slide. In addition, multiple parameters and constraints were developed to determine how and when to adjust auto driller setpoints with the goal of optimizing ROP based on the desired amount of tool face control for each slide. Thorough lab testing occurred before conducting field tests where the feature parameters were fine-tuned to determine optimal settings based on customers’ performance goals. Before field testing, baseline slide performance data was collected to serve as a point of comparison, and the key performance indicators that were recorded for each slide include the number of auto driller setpoint changes, number of drilling parameter setpoint increases/decreases triggered, average ROP, and tool face control scores. This paper describes the initial observations and test results of the newly integrated auto driller parameter setpoint adjustment logic within the automated directional drilling system to optimize slide performance with improved consistency. Particularly, the new feature's performance is compared to prior baseline data to better understand its impact and full potential across operations. User interactions with the new feature will also be discussed, along with challenges that were faced.