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Next generation field development planning

Aker BP and Halliburton are revolutionizing well planning and construction. Through Halliburton’s IEnergy® cloud solution, Aker BP increases efficiency, and reduces well risk and well cost. The next step is planning software for entire field concepts, covering both subsurface and well construction.

“We have successfully implemented Collaborative Well Planning for optimal well placements, reduced risk and increased resources. We are close to designing a well in a day with high quality in the open Digital Well Program® built on Halliburton’s IEnergy solution. With Field Development Planning we are accelerating our digital transformation to the next level,” states Tommy Sigmundstad, SVP Drilling and Wells for Aker BP.

“We build on a close and collaborative relationship over many years. We combine this with expertise, transformative and game-changing technologies that Aker BP and Halliburton have brought together, and agile work processes,” adds Chandra Yeleshwarapu, senior director at Halliburton Landmark.

Collaborative Well Planning

In Aker BP’s onshore operating centre, a team is focussing on a Collaborative Well Planning session involving a new central platform project in the Valhall area in the North Sea.

Collaborative Well Planning is an integrated way of working. In the session, the subsurface team collaborates with Drilling and Wells in real time with all subsurface data available in the software where the well trajectories are created.

“Through Collaborative Well Planning all disciplines contribute to the well planning resulting in efficient, stable and productive wells, explains Sindre Hadland, senior Geologist.

There are already 400 wells drilled on the giant Valhall field. Now the team is placing an additional 16 wells to extend the lifetime of the field.

“The goal is to find the optimal path for drilling through the complex overburden and into the reservoir, with as low risk and cost as possible.”

Sigurd Kinn
Lead Drilling Engineer

For the new central platform project in Valhall, collaborative well planning has reduced well cost and risk, which in turn has improved project economy.

Digital Well Program

Once the team has identified optimal well placements and trajectories, the work is moved into the Digital Well Program. This is where wells are ultimately designed and planned.

Digital Well Program is a cloud application built on an open architecture. It provides a platform for integrated well planning and design, which promotes increased collaboration and connectivity across drilling activities.

“Together with Halliburton we have created an open platform, the Digital Well Program, on their IEnergy solution. One of the important principles in this application is that fact that any third-party application and system can be integrated into our workflow. Data flows freely between the different applications and systems,” explains Arnfinn Grøtte, digitalisation lead well construction.

“When we went live, we had around 25 third party plug-ins in the Digital Well Program. In 2022 this will grow to 60”.

Arnfinn Grøtte
Digitalisation lead well construction

Design a well in a day

Through Digital Well Program engineers have access to automated workflows which guide them through the work process to design a well. For senior drilling engineer Jeroen Nijhof well design is now more efficient:

“Before I used Excel and multiple stand-alone applications, where every concept was handled manually which was very labour-intensive. Now I can – in real time – investigate historical data & lessons learned from other offset wells. I can use various types of drilling and well simulation tools,” explains Nijhof, and continues:

“And I can do this while always having a 3D visualisation of my plan. I connect the engineering workflow to third party applications, without spending time worrying about the data quality, because 90 percent is now automated.”

“The Digital Well Program results in increased efficiency and extreme increase in quality of the data sets. This results in reduced risk and uncertainty in our well designs”, says Jeroen Nijhof, senior drilling engineer.

Aker BP is now close to fulfilling the ambition of designing a well in a day – with high quality.

“Even better, the open architecture allows for other oil and gas companies to build components that can be contributed back to the platform. This is key to accelerating improvements across our industry”

Chandra Yeleshwarapu
Senior director, Halliburton Landmark

Field Development Planning

The next step in the Aker BP and Halliburton digital partnership is the co-development of a next generation field development planning software. The collaboration delivers a new cloud application – Field Development Planning.

Field Development Planning converts the manual process of collating field development data to make the decision gate process more efficient and auditable and provides a common audit trail across the subsurface community.

“This software will enable us to understand and mitigate risk and uncertainty on a whole new level. Through Field development planning we can understand how engineering work matures during the development phases of a project. This increases efficiency, maximizes value and allows us to make data-driven decisions for entire field concepts”, concludes Arnfinn Grøtte.