CRITICAL ISSUES IN DRILLING & COMPLETIONS
Scaling up efficiency in a digital
future will require better data
management, standardization
Recognizing value of data-driven decision
making, Murphy Oil is placing greater focus on
increasing agility around technology, innovation
Molly Smith, General Manager of Drilling
and Completions, Murphy Oil
BY STEPHEN WHITFIELD, SENIOR EDITOR
What would you say are some of the
biggest challenges that the global oil
and gas industry currently faces, and
how do you think the industry should
best address those challenges?
From Murphy’s perspective, I’d say that
advancing our strategic priorities is key to
addressing those challenges.
For one, we need to deliver to our share-
holders and partners. Our primary focus is
maximizing free cash flow to alleviate debt
and return value to our shareholders. In
the past three years, Murphy has reduced
its spud-to-production time by 64%. How
have we done this? Primarily through an
operational strategy that centers around
applications and tools that allow for the
real-time sharing of best practices across
our organization and with our service
partners. That’s been really important to
us. Our drilling and completions team has
also been dedicated to accelerating the
well delivery process. Our approach to
execution involves deploying two rigs
on the same pad, accompanied by frac
crews chasing the rigs to put our new
wells online early. In doing so, we’ve often
encountered inconsistent operations, but
we have addressed that by implementing
robust measures that mitigate irregular-
ity and improve both reliability and effi-
ciency. We also need to explore, and Murphy
is committed to exploration. In addition
to delivering our developmental well pro-
gram in the US Gulf of Mexico, we drilled
a discovery in early 2023 and are currently
18 drilling another prospect. Our organiza-
tional structure and technical planning
have allowed for the agility to navigate
the dynamic regulatory environments that
we’re facing. Murphy’s looking to expand
its footprint this year – we’re planning to
enter Côte d’Ivoire and drill in Vietnam.
Still, there’s a lot more we can be doing.
I believe we need to enhance data captur-
ing and quality to highlight inefficiencies
and delays in project delivery, specifically
real-time monitoring. That’s going to help
us streamline our operations.
We also need to prioritize sustainable
practices and adopt proactive measures to
mitigate the impacts of our operations on
the environment. And we’ve got to invest
in upskilling the workforce. The land-
scape of the energy industry is constantly
evolving, and we need to bridge the gap.
You mentioned data capturing. The
industry already captures a wealth of
data from its wells, and with the
increasing prevalence of digitalization,
the amount of data available has only
increased. Do you think the industry is
making the best use of the data it has
at its disposal?
You’re right – the amount of data is con-
stantly increasing with the modernization
of devices, the development of IoT devices
and sensors, as well as the digitalization
of workflows. This brings demands for
higher quality and higher quantities of
data. As an industry, we’ve been focused on
increasing the quantity of data, but now
we’re looking to integrate these new tech-
nologies together. We’ve got to shift the
priority from increasing quantity to solv-
ing the challenges involved with integrat-
ing these technologies. We need to look at
the lack of standardization with our data,
and we need to create useful reporting
and analytics structures to generate more
value. Looking at what Murphy’s doing, we’re
trying to find ways to help our data lead
to better and more strategic outcomes.
Our drilling and completions team has
been collaborating with our subsurface
and production teams on creating a data
infrastructure that’s allowing us to manip-
ulate and analyze large quantities of data
by applying an intelligent standardization,
Murphy Unique Well Identifiers (MUWIs).
MUWIs have helped us integrate a
diverse system of data, improving data
management and increasing data utiliza-
tion across our organization.
On top of that, our open-source data cul-
ture is allowing us to ask better questions
about where our data is coming from, how
we’re using that data, who the stakehold-
ers are within our organization and, most
importantly, what the interdependencies
are within the data that lead to whatever
insights we can glean.
What do you see as the next steps for
helping the industry gain better
insights from its data?
I think the answer to this question ties
into some other issues we’re seeing in the
industry. Right now, we’re struggling with
JAN UARY/FEB RUARY 2024 • D R I LLI N G CO N T R ACTO R
CRITICAL ISSUES IN DRILLING & COMPLETIONS
volatile market pricing, upskilling and
retaining our workforce, and attracting
new and diverse talent. It’s really impor-
tant that we have a data strategy that
addresses these challenges and allows us
to meet our business objectives.
With that in mind, I think there are
three things the industry needs to focus
on with data. First, standardization needs
to improve so that we can reduce the time
we spend engineering data and increase
the time we spend analyzing data. Second,
we need to invest in innovating machine
learning and artificial intelligence meth-
ods so that they can fit with more indus-
try-centric datasets and workflows. And
third, we must improve the efficacy of
our data-modeling methods so that they
can give us a more comprehensive under-
standing of our operations.
Eric Hambly, Executive VP at Murphy
Oil, put it best in some of his townhall
presentations: As an industry, if we don’t
learn to adapt our strategies toward data,
we’re going to go extinct. There’s no in-
between. Stepping back to a broader topic ,
we’ve seen the industry significantly
increase its adoption of digital tech-
nologies in recent years. What kind of
value has Murphy Oil derived from
digitalization? Can you provide some
examples of the benefits you’ve seen?
The industry has undergone a shift in
recent years, with more widespread adop-
tion of digital technologies. Murphy is
working to leverage this digitalization to
enhance our operations, and that goes
back to data: In order to really get the
most value out of digitalization, we have
to harness the power of our data as best
as we can.
My vision for innovation to scale up
efficiency in a digital future is reflected
in many initiatives we have at Murphy,
such as enabling a procedure to store
data under different tags by classifying
via fuzzy logic. I also spearheaded an ini-
tiative to digitize our Safety Observation
Program, which has revolutionized our
safety workflow, in my opinion. The initia-
tive also enabled the digitalization of our
onshore operations through our Integrated
Operations Platform program, and I’ve
supported the launch of the Murphy Labs
Apps store, which integrates multidisci-
plinary data with transparency to drive
real-time analytics.
Right now, I’m focused on the inte-
gration of digital solutions like machine
learning and data processing. Overseeing
drilling and completions means that safe-
ty must be at the forefront of any initiative
we undertake, and our approach ensures
that we’re all working as one unified
team. Do you see the industry embracing
the digital mindset as much as it
needs to?
Embracing technology is an ongoing
process, and leaders across the indus-
try have started realizing the benefits of
adopting technology and modernizing
their processes. At Murphy, we recently
implemented a structure to adopt tech-
DRILL DEEPER.
RUN LONGER.
SET RECORDS.
Don’t take our word for it -
the data speaks for itself.
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