Nabors and Halliburton Strike Blow for Drilling Automation

Nabors Industries (NYSE: NBR) and Halliburton (NYSE: HAL) reported Tuesday that they have advanced the oil and gas digital transformation by making well plans and their execution at the wellsite more seamless.

Nabors’ “SmartROS” rig operating system can now integrate with Halliburton’s “Digital Well Program” well construction software, the companies revealed in a written statement emailed to Rigzone. The firms noted the technology integration overcomes the shortcomings of using static documents for well plans, such as:

• limited plan validation
• inconsistent communication between parties
• failure to capture changes driven by operational conditions
• diminished ability to capture and apply lessons learned
• more time needed to manage multiple plan iterations.

“By automatically communicating our industry-leading Digital Well Program engineering design in the form of drilling activities for execution by Nabors SmartROS, Landmark and Nabors Drilling Solutions (NDS) have fundamentally changed the way wells are constructed,” remarked Nagaraj Srinivasan, senior vice president of Halliburton Landmark, Halliburton Digital Solutions and Consulting. “Not only is it a key step toward overall drilling automation, but a catalyst to unleash continued innovation to lower cost and improve reliability of well construction.”

The Landmark-NDS collaboration uses an open architecture and allows operators to integrate into their existing workflows, Nabors and Halliburton stated.

“We are excited to integrate our unique and leading Smart ROS rig automation platform with Halliburton’s Digital Well Program through our SmartPLAN open interface,” commented NDS Senior Vice President Subodh Saxena. “In addition to providing our customers with a seamless digital experience for interactive rig activity planning, scheduling, and coordination, this integrated offering also enables optimization of the drilling recipes and workflows for automated drilling and wellbore placement.”

To contact the author, email mveazey@rigzone.com.