CRITICAL ISSUES IN DRILLING & COMPLETIONS
ADNOC Drilling looks to digital
and integrated services solutions
to drive better well deliveries
Automation, decarbonization and accelerated
training programs among other key strategies
to drive efficiencies, prepare for the future
Abdulrahman Abdulla AlSeiari, CEO,
ADNOC Drilling
BY STEPHEN WHITFIELD, SENIOR EDITOR
What do you see as the biggest chal-
lenges that the global drilling industry
currently faces?
With the current situation of the drilling
business globally and in the Middle East,
the biggest challenge is the availability
of talent. It will be quite difficult for the
industry to operate without new talent.
The new energies are perhaps more attrac-
tive to them than coming into the drilling
industry. As industry leaders, we need to work on
attracting talent in our direction. That may
require us to show off some of the work
we’re doing related to technology adoption,
digitalization and other things that might
resonate more with that talent.
What is ADNOC Drilling doing to attract
new talent?
We have put a lot of investment into
different kinds of programs that allow us
to secure those people. For UAE nationals,
we have dedicated programs for develop-
ment where we’re targeting young people
for positions within the organization. One
of these programs is designed specifi-
cally for junior students, and they work
full time as a derrickhand for a mini-
mum of six months before they move
on to another position. We train them
in both theoretical and practical aspects
of different positions on the rig, and we
promote them to different positions over
the course of two to three years. They’re
assessed at each position, and we see
where they fit.
12 We have another program for gradu-
ates where we develop their competencies
until they’re good enough to become full-
fledged drillers – that’s also a three-year
program. We’re trying to capitalize on
these individuals and push them faster
up the ladder – not so fast where they
don’t gain the knowledge, but fast enough.
We’ve had guys come into our organi-
zation as roughnecks, and after going
through this training, they’re in the posi-
tion of a driller.
You mentioned showing off the work
our industry is doing with technology
and digitalization. Can you talk about
some examples of ADNOC Drilling’s
digital projects?
One example is our real-time monitor-
ing center at our headquarters, where we
see the performance of wells on a daily
basis, and we can work with our clients to
overcome any inefficiencies, or invisible
lost time, using data. It’s a win-win for
the drilling company and for the opera-
tor. We’re both benefitting from using that
information. We’re also managing some
of the oilfield service operations through
the monitoring center. That has allowed
us to reduce the number of people needed
to be onsite because we put our subject
matter experts in the center to monitor our
operations. These efforts have been focused primar-
ily on directional drilling and geosteering,
and this has helped us to realize substan-
tial efficiency improvements.
Moving on to the subject of autonomy,
what do you see as the key barriers to
achieving fully autonomous drilling?
Do you think that’s something we can
realistically achieve?
I think it is something we can achieve,
but we’re always going to require some
integration with the human on the rig.
When you’re drilling, not every hole is
going to require the same method, and you
have to interact with the well, deal with
certain issues, troubleshoot in some areas.
When we talk about offshore, there are
opportunities to automate certain process-
es. We’ve tried to do this on our jackups in
the past where we automate certain activi-
ties. It worked, but somehow it was more
inefficient than what we were doing before
because of the processes we had to work
through. Now, there are other technologies
that we have to work with, particularly with
moving pipe from the deck to the rig floor –
that’s something we can look at. With our
island rigs, we’ve done quite a lot of automa-
tion, and it’s been quite successful for us.
The biggest challenge for us has been
with land rigs. We’ve found automation
has been quite difficult for us to achieve
there, simply because we keep changing
locations every few weeks from one well
to another. We have to dismantle the rig,
move it to another location, assemble it
again . We’ve found challenges with short
circuits damaging some of the equipment
on the rig – sometimes we’d have cables
and fittings not going together, and then,
say, the top drive would short circuit and
that would cause NPT.
JAN UARY/FEB RUARY 2024 • D R I LLI N G CO N T R ACTO R