Abstract
In today's ever-changing and competitive environment, oil and gas industry is quickly moving towards integrated technologies as a founding pillar of any business strategy able to meet the trilemma of the growing energy demand together with the need of an equitable supply and its environmental sustainability.
Deep water drilling technologies are universally recognized among the front runner along this road map, coming from a long journey of trials and errors and capable only in the recent years to move close to the full potential made by the integration, completely machine controlled, of multiple rig equipment.
This paper describes one among the first experience made in the industry of such process control automation set up on the 7th generation drilling ship Saipem Santorini in Gulf of Mexico over the years 2022 and 2023.
Results achieved clearly demonstrate a tangible enhancement of the work safety, as the human/machine interface is lowered by near the 50% along the whole well construction process, as well as the drilling and completion performance went beyond the 10% of global well time reduction, just as a starting point.
This first experience has been documented over a collaborative one-year period through advanced KPI monitoring and systematic approach used for installation, training, remote support and data analytics that illustrates a proven path to success which is going to be reiterated soon up to a level of a new standard for deep water drilling.
