DWOP is the process of analyzing each step of the well construction process to generate ideas for improving performance and reducing cost.
Picture this: Six months before spudding a deepwater wildcat, the drilling team members are scratching their heads. Which rig will they contract? Will shallowwater flow affect the casing scheme? Will they keep the fragile balance between pore pressure fracture gradient and mud weight? Which underreamer will they use in high-pressure zones? And will they deliver a well that flows, on time and within budget?
One way of managing budgets (as well as risk and uncertainty) is the Drilling Well Optimization Process (DWOP), also known as Drill the Well On Paper.
The old carpenter's saying, "Measure twice, cut once," neatly sums up the process, as errors are made on paper. But the real value of DWOP is to identify opportunities where nonproductive time can be eliminated or health, safety and environmental risks reduced by dissecting the well construction process and sharing experiences. This last aspect of the DWOP never fails to impress; the average DWOP group will contain in excess of 500 years of experience. Tapping into five centuries of experience is important not only because it improves performance, but also because it trains new talent.
DWOP encourages us to remove our job mask. It encourages the person doing the job to ask: Why do we do things one way and not another? How can we interact better with others? How will new or unfamiliar equipment be run?
Randy Smith Training Schools cites two cost-reducing examples generated during DWOP. The first was achieved by combining two sequential steps into a simultaneous activity. The operator had planned to drill through the shoe track, enter 10 ft (3 m) of open hole and then increase mud weight by 2 lb/gal to perform a leakoff test. A member of the rig crew suggested mud weight could be increased gradually while the shoe track was being drilled. This enabled the operator to realize an 80% reduction in circulation time.
The second example was related to running and cementing 11,500 ft (3,508 m) of 11 7/8-in. casing with complete testing of the blowout preventers. The approval for expenditure (AFE) had been set at 96 hours, with the DWOP team establishing a target of 78 hours, based on the length of the casing string and the complexity of the job. As a result of good communication and planning, the task was completed in 64 hours.
With DWOP, each team's targets are checked against those of the whole group and a consensus is reached. The first definition is the technical limit for each activity, or minimum time required to complete each task in a perfect world. It serves as a theoretical value only and can never be achieved as an actual target. Next, a realistic target based on the best past performance is established, which becomes the performance benchmark for the well.
Removing the job mask can be liberating because it fosters a different kind of thinking. It gives people space to think about operations without the pressure of being on the rig and making instant decisions. As the rig-pig says, "An hour away is a luxury I can't afford to think about."
A useful byproduct of the group discussion is the identification of potential problems such as supply chain delays related to importation, environmental or linguistic obstacles. This can be invaluable in flagging issues for operators and companies entering new markets.
Another benefit is the creation of a team atmosphere that can help cut across "us vs. them" barriers. Our industry tends to compartmentalize service companies, many of whom do not see a beginning, middle and end to the well construction process. Similarly, a common complaint leveled at the drilling staff addresses their obsession with drilling and casing the hole with little or no regard for what happens afterward. This changes with DWOP because well construction is considered in its entirety.
Along with the operational AFE vs. depth charts, DWOP adds a curve representing targets set by the group directly responsible for operations. In this way the project can be tracked until completion and subsequently compared with like wells. Once the project has been completed, the closeout meeting enables the operator to review service company performance and transfer lessons learned. It also provides a forum for the operator to celebrate successes with the service companies.
Granted, DWOP has limitations. For example, a complete DWOP from project start to finish can be time-consuming; the prespud, training and closeout meetings may take 5 days. And it offers no solution to the problem of crew turnover. In fact, where staff turnover is high, it may even worsen the situation as replacement staff members are unlikely to be enthusiastic about inherited targets. Nor does it offer a solution for personality mismatches. Nor does it resolve rivalries between the rig and the office - the "we call the shots around here" syndrome. But solving these problems is beyond most people's control, so perhaps the only valid limitation is the time consumption factor.
Could we reduce the time involved and simplify DWOP? Probably, but we would lose out on the quality of our decisions. Ours is a highly sophisticated industry, yet we often take this for granted. Whether we are gazing into unfathomed trenches at the bottom of the ocean or cementing casing far below permafrost, we are involved in highly complex operations. And therein lies the rub. Complexity takes time to unravel.

Comments