Page 16 - Practical Well Planning and Drilling Manual

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Practical Well Planning and Drilling Manual
the operators much faster than by natural attrition and without replac-
ing them, except by employing consultants. Some operators may end
up with no one to properly supervise the core business of drilling. This
will expose them to risks associated with major incidents such as
blowouts without being able to manage that risk. Even on a turnkey
well, the operator still has risks.
Alliancing contracts are becoming common, where a lead contrac-
tor is employed to subcontract and manage all the services needed to
drill a well, but the operator still stays closely involved. Effectively, the
lead contractor provides most of the resources of a drilling department,
plus areas of specialist expertise.
There are some positive benefits from these strategies. If a true
team spirit emerges where people work cooperatively together for
achieving the same goals, costs can possibly be cut on long-term
(development) projects. However, one guiding principle should be that
the operator retains the technical ability to plan and supervise the wells.
This means keeping competent drilling people in place.
There are at least three necessary factors for an alliance: commit-
ment, communication, and competence. These take time to get in
place. An alliance will not swing smoothly into action from the start
therefore management also needs the commitment to see it through the
initial hiccups.
Another clear trend is that many people planning and supervising
wells do not have significant wellsite exposure. You can take the
smartest person there is, put them through a degree program, and send
them to all possible classroom courses. However, without the practi-
cal knowledge—the feel for drilling that comes from years on the rig—
they are unlikely to become first class drilling people. They will tend
to “use their PCs as a senior partner to make decisions for them rather
than as a tool to help them make better-informed decisions them-
selves,” and they will be unduly influenced by the people around them.
The attention paid to safety, the environment, and quality control
has advanced immeasurably. Running an operation that is safe mini-
mizes environmental impact and concentrates on all aspects of quality,
which is ultimately more cost effective. Even now this is still sometimes
a “hard sell”; many people pay lip service to these things but are not
committed to them. I remember years ago, working offshore Brunei as
a driller, being told to wait until after dark and then dump a reserve
tank containing about 50 bbls of oil-based mud into the sea. The line to
the pump was plugged, and we had to clean it out. We ran a hose in and
used a small pump over several hours to recover this mud back into the

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