Drilling Software Solves Puzzle

Posted on June 11, 2013 by Gefei Liu, PVI

I once attended a Bible study, which focused on the book of Genesis. The teacher asked: “What is the most important piece of jigsaw puzzle?” Students started to answer “The corner ones”, “One with straight edge”. After a pause, he slowly revealed “The most important piece of jigsaw is the box top.” We all smiled when he showed us a slide of a box of puzzle with puzzle image.

He further explained that the book of Genesis is the box top of the Bible. “Genesis maps out all the happenings of the entire Bible.” He said.

Many of us played with puzzles ourselves or with our children. The finished artwork bears no resemblance to the hundreds of pieces of colored cardboards in the box that initially greeted us. Although the individual elements remain the same, and do not reveal much information, the complete work allows us to see the whole picture.

In a similar manner, drilling engineers are constantly putting together the pieces of procedure, equipment, instrument readings from rig floor, and their own calculations. Our job is to fit them into the right places. This way, we can understand why certain drilling parameters change, why problems occur or what our observation mean.

The beauty of drilling software such as TADPRO (torque and drag) is its ability to put pieces of information including ROP, RPM and WOB all together to solve the puzzle. The integration of operation parameters, wellbore trajectory and advanced mathematics model produces more meaningful results. Think of TADPRO as your box top!

Drilling Software: Your Hot Model

Posted on June 4, 2013 by Gefei Liu, PVI

Everyone including drilling engineer seems to be busier than before – There are always more wells to be drilled, more projects to be managed, more well planning to be done and reports to be run. Let us face it: you and I are not supermen or ironmen. We are just normal John and Joe, facing the increasing demanding.

Any help would be helpful. Imagine an assistant, who could be on-call 24/7! And she does not charge overtime or complain about tasks. One might think this kind of helper is a far-fetched idea. But what is in my mind is an assistant you can actually own and this assistant is most likely a super model: drilling engineering model.

All of us hate to do repeated tasks, and that is why we invented dish washer and vacuum cleaner. From abacus, to calculator, to computer, we calculate more and faster. It might be fun to find the greatest common divisor in 3^rd grade, but hand calculation of a buoyant weight of pipe in mud is more of a tedious step than an exciting destination. We have important technical decisions to be made in office and on rig floor.

That is why drilling engineering software such as PVI’s TADPRO (torque and drag model) comes handy. It frees us from repeated manual calculation and errors associated. These drilling models do not discriminate vertical, deviated, horizontal or ERD wells. Provided with proper input data, these model assistants perform analysis, run reports, show animation within a few seconds. If you are not sure about certain variable such as friction factor in open hole sections, they like many attentive helpers, even give you sensitivity study to show you the best and worst scenarios.

Sometimes, these models are just like robots, receiving orders and performing tasks. Other times, they give you crucial advices and identify potential problems, such as helical buckling or excessive downhole pressure. They are like a senior consultant who is amiable and does not charge premium.

These models are strictly trained to be friendly. They do not care much if you give them a job after 5pm or in weekends. They are very tolerant if you accidently key in the wrong data. They do not give you an eye. Instead, they kindly remind you of the error and even suggest you the correct input in many cases.

Did I mention that these models are very pretty? Their faces (what we call interface) are carefully designed so that users will not get lost and interaction creates pleasant experience.

Drilling is tough, find good software - your hot model.

Cloud Computing for Cementing Lab

Posted on May 28, 2013 by Gefei Liu, PVI

In just 2 decades, the internet has fundamentally changed the way people interact with computers and each other. Everyone is now talking about “the cloud.” Business applications are moving to the cloud. The shift from traditional software models to the Internet has steadily gained momentum over the last 10 years. It is no longer a fad; it is the future.

Cloud computing is the use of computing resources (hardware and software) that are delivered as a service over a network (typically the Internet). The name comes from the use of a cloud-shaped symbol as an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it contains in system diagrams.

In cloud computing, users access cloud-based applications through a web browser while the software and user's data are stored on servers at a remote location. The idea is to share resources to achieve coherence and economies of scale similar to a utility (like the electricity grid) over a network.

These innovations in cloud computing are making our business (drilling software) more mobile and collaborative.

For example, the design and test of the slurry are the integral parts of every cementing job. This process is time-consuming and expensive because of the variability of the conditions between wells. Traditionally, cementing engineers and lab technicians used paper forms to record test results. With the introduction of MS Office Excel, people began to take advantage of electronic filing. This has greatly enhanced the reporting quality and filing. However, the part critically missing with this approach is organizing numerous reports and searching for specific data.

A stand-alone software with database backbone may solve the above problems, but we chose a more advanced approach: a web-based cementing lab database management. CEMLab, our latest release provides solution to problems many cementing lab manager and technicians face today:

• Difficulty of designing cement slurries

• Waste of resources to repeat similar tests

• Lack of prove while job problems occur

• Non-standard practices at various labs within a company

Our goal was to make this cementing lab database management system CEMLab the daily platform to design slurry, record and store test results, create lab reports, and perform searches. This integration will free lab managers and technician to focus on their core business.

CEMLab is completely web-based, allows you to login from anywhere. You do not need to download a heavy desktop program, just visit your assigned server site from any computer worldwide.

CEMLab does not force lab staff to abandon their beloved workflow. In fact, features in CEMLab such as user management, job tracking and remote submission of test requests make workflow easier than ever. Workflows will become more streamlined. The search function featuring various and combined criteria is flexible enough to make the time-consuming task easy and simple.

2000 years ago, Chinese philosopher Lao Zi said:”A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” We have taken the first step toward streamlining cement slurry design and testing. Looking ahead, we are excited to see how this application, the first of its kind, brings happiness to many cementing lab managers and technicians along their journey!

Art and Engineering of Drilling Software

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Gefei Liu, PVI

Calgary is Canada’s oil center and the sister city to Houston. It is also a city of art and design.

There are quite a number of art galleries on 11^th avenue in the southwest part of town. If I do have enough time to tour around, I’d prefer to visit Banff National Park, otherwise these galleries are the great substitutes. There are lots of beautiful paintings, many of them depicting the wonders of the Canadian Rockies.

In many ways, the creation of a painting is similar to the development of software. Artists have the urge to express their ideas. They construct the final image in their minds and plan the steps to achieve it. They use all the essential tools such as paintbrush, paints, palette, canvas and easel to translate their abstract image into artistic reality.

Similarly, during a typical software development, ideas are processed into technical specification represented by flowcharts and data arrays. Developers use computer language to translate the abstract formulas and logics into a tangible tool.

As drilling software developers, we have something to create for others, not because we have to create something, but because it helps others and shares information. It is like the painting process: with each practiced brushstroke of the sunset, it gets closer to its perfected final version. Eventually the artist (developer) says, “It’s done. This is it!” Our recently developed software CEMLab (Cementing Lab Data Management System) is a debut of a lively “expert” on cementing.

The difference between art painting and software is that software continuously improves as the result of interaction between developers and users, while a painting is finalized once and for all.

We hope that our clients who provide cementing services will use CEMLab as their cementing lab’s platform for designing slurry, recording testing data, generating reports and managing test data. Together, we can make your job easier by continually making CEMLab better.

Playing Tennis and Drilling Well

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Gefei Liu, PVI

Houston Oilman’s Tennis Tournament (HOTT) is one of the largest oil and gas industry sporting events in Texas. This year, my friend and I played Men’s double (Group A) and eventually won the 1^st place in consolation. Our photographer friend took this snapshot at the end of one match. We won this match. More importantly, we won their smile. It is easy for winning team to smile or cry, but it is difficult for losing side to do so. We did have some fun.

2013 Houston Oilman's Tennis Tournament (HOTT), Giammalva Racquet Club, Mar. 22 - 23

The competitive nature of tennis makes it tough to be a social sport like golf for recreational players like us. Upbeat spirit and sportsmanship create pleasant chemicals among competing teams.

Worldwide figures for the number of tennis players are next to impossible to come by, but tennis is widely acknowledged as one of the most popular and cosmopolitan of all sports. In U.S., a 2005 study commissioned by the USTA and the Tennis Industry Association estimated that nearly 25 million people in this country play tennis.

In the world of professional tennis, there are 4 Grand Slam tennis tournaments. 4 times each year, 128 of the world’s best players fight in those 2 weeks, 127 matches, 7 rounds, with 1 champion and 1 large sum of prize money. Wimbledon (one of the Grand Slams) just announced that this year’s singles will each receive $2.4 million. The road to championship is sweaty.

In petroleum industry, there have been 4.3 million wells drilled in the U.S. and Canada over 150 years. There are about 1,000,000 wells drilled in Texas. But not every well drilled delivers desired results, all easy oil and gas is gone.

According to George E. King of Apache Corp., in a recent SPE lunch-n-learn presentation, a typical risk and reward analysis starts with 100 ideas, then 50 leads (leases with potential for oil and gas), then 25 prospects, then 11 drillable wells, finally 1 discovery.

Playing professional tennis and drilling oil and gas wells are both risky and rewarding. Both industries have developed technologies to improve their odd of success. The materials of tennis racket changed from wood, to metals, to ceramics graphite and composites. Manufacturers are creating strings that are designed to produce more spin, power, and durability.

Technology development plays a more conspicuous role in oil industry than in tennis. Before 1995 (when the dot.com ever began), the oil companies earned a higher rate of return on invested capital than any other industry. When trying to diversify, they realized that everything else was less profitable than oil. Their exclusive investment option was R & D to make exploration and production operations more profitable. Billions of dollars went into petroleum technology. Today, drilling technologies including drilling software enable us to drill deeper and drill in various geographical areas like jungle, desert and the Arctic slope.

I will not be involved in on-site drilling operation, but we will provide drilling engineers with drilling engineering software.

I will not be able to play competitive tennis, but I will definitely try to participate in the upcoming SPE Tennis Tournament in autumn.

A Preview of Drilling Operation

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Gefei Liu, PVI

The great Albert Einstein once said, “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” Albert Einstein said this in the last century. Since then people’s imaginations have come a long way. From a caveman’s painting on rocks to modern man’s sci-fi and animated movies. Imagination explodes around us.

We see imagination on a big scale, such as, NASA’s Apollo 11 – the first manned mission to land on Moon in 1969 – and on a small scale, where we use our imagination to be more creative and happier.

In art, our imagination allows us to be whoever and whatever we want to be in this world. Whatever we imagine, we can conceive and give birth to it. We can sing it in song, write it in a story or poem, draw it, paint it or even sculpt it. Through imagination, the world is literally at our fingertips.

As we grow up, we often grow out of our imagination. We are taught to stop using it. And we soon believe that we no longer have one. But we can recapture our imagination through some simple steps, such as:

Think about something extraordinary when you wake up
Pretend to be someone else
Visualize things you want to create
Wear socks that don't match
Drive to work a different way or eat at a new restaurant
...

Imagination demands that we open our mind and heart and let our thoughts flow freely.

For drilling engineers, drilling software is a great tool to boost our imagination. With this tool, we can be drilling a 20,000 foot horizontal well or cementing a casing in an offshore well at a water depth of 10,000 feet, all while sitting in front of a computer screen. During the planning stage, we don't have to be on-site. A simple run of a simulation puts us on the rig floor so we can see hookload changes as it is happening. We can even modify our operational parameters (ROP, RPM, etc.) to see how they impact our drilling performance, simply by switching between input and output windows or employing a sensitivity study.

Drilling software, through 2D or 3D visual display, makes our imagination tangible and real. Sometimes it can even spot the flaw in our imagination by identifying potential problems in our drilling operation design before we execute it in the field.

Below is output from PVI’s CEMVIEW software (cementing engineering toolbox). It shows the casing configuration and wellbore schematic at each casing stage.

Just as our imagination is the preview of our lives’ coming attraction, drilling software is our engineers’ preview of our next project.

Tennis Match and Drilling Software

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Gefei Liu, PVI

We just saw the curtain of 2013 Australian Open down. For 2 weeks, the year’s first Grand Slam showcased the top players from around the world. One of the most impressive matches is between Serbian Novak Djokovic, the world no. 1 and Swiss player Wawrinka, in quarterfinal. The match is a zig-zag, corner-to-corner grueling fight, which lasted more than 5 hours. At the end, Djokovic, cornered by Wawrinka’s deep and low shot, managed to pull the trigger and crafted a wide-angled passing shot. The score board froze at 12:10am in 5^th set tiebreak: Novak earned a spot in semi-final. He eventually came out victorious and won the title.

For viewers like us, the longer the match, the more interesting the game. For players like Novak and Wawrinka, playing the heated match like that requires tremendous physical and mental strengths. Their strategy is probably not to play prolonged match unless necessary. It is sad that only one can be the winner, since tennis is a really popular sport and people play similar sports like badminton using great equipment like the best badminton rackets which are easy to get online.

Fortunately, not every one of us needs to fight like that. In our industry, we have developed a market place or system in which everyone is doing his/her job while depends others to support them. Everyone supports someone else and gets help from others.

Our business is developing advanced drilling software, which helps drilling engineers and managers to make informed technical decision, quickly and wisely. With the right software tools like HYDPRO (drilling hydraulics) and MUDPRO (mud reporting), engineers can spend less time in calculation or report, and more time on critical matters or just relax, knowing that the technical issues are taken care of.

MUDPRO, since its debut 3 years ago, has helped hundreds of mud engineers in their daily morning reporting. It takes less than 10 minutes to create daily report (if inventory is done), and creating end-of-well recap is instantaneously. Did I mention well comparison? It is just a click away.

When it comes to drilling software in general or MUDPRO for mud reporting, using PVI’s software is as easy as Game, Set and Match.

Change of Plane

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Gefei Liu, PVI

Milan was the last stop of my vacation in Italy. On my way back to Houston, I had to make 2 connections at Zurich, Switzerland and Amsterdam. The Zurich airport is still using buses to pick up and drop off passengers from concourses to airplanes.

Things were smooth for me to get into my airplane. After I sat down, a flight attendant made a short announcement: “This plane is flying to Amsterdam. Those of you, who are going to Munich, please come to the front.” Immediately a handful people, surprised and talking, rose from their seats. Then, everyone started laughing, including those in the wrong airplane.

They must have stepped into the wrong bus at the concourse, given that there were several buses leaving from the neighboring gates. A wrong bus could lead to a different city in a different country.

Personally, I only saw this kind of drama in movies like “Home Alone 2”. This is the first time I witnessed a similar situation, almost happened in real life.

We have developed a suite of drilling software, solving various engineering problems during drilling and completion phases. Our cementing software suite consists of CEMPRO (mud displacement model), CEMVIEW (cementing engineering toolbox), CentraDesign (centralizer placement) and CTEMP (wellbore temperature model).

Our clients have not mistakenly purchased wrong programs, but occasionally they forget to purchase the related model. Recently, a service company involved in pumping service purchased CEMPRO, which is geared for cementing job design and simulation. CEMPRO surely can assist them as engineering and marketing tool for their cementing teams. But after software training, they realized that for tender preparation, they also needed CEMVIEW, which calculates the volume requirements, material balance, amounts and costs of additives for all casing strings in a well. It creates casing schematic with cementing columns for each string and entire wellbore structure.

If we compare a well to a building, the end-of-well report with wellbore schematic from CEMVIEW is like a blue print of architecture.

CEMVIEW - Wellbore Schematic

For bidding purpose, CEMVIEW is an excellent tool for cementing companies to illustrate their job design and give cost estimation to their potential clients.

Finally, our client purchased CEMVIEW as well. We were happy to make a new sale and happy for them, because we know CEMVIEW will make their life easy.

CEMPRO and CEMVIEW are like wings of an airplane. With both programs, your cementing job will be a smooth flight and you do not need to change plane.

What Can We Do in 3 Minutes?

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Gefei Liu, PVI

There are millions of answers to this question. What I want to share with you is a story I learned in Dubai Museum.

At Dubai Creek in the early 20^th century, pearl diving was a way to make a living. There were about 300 pearl diving dhows with over 7000 sailors on board. The divers made very deep dives, with only a nose clip, a leather finger protector, a basket made of rope, a stone weighing about 5kg to pull them down and a rope to pull them up again. About 50 dives were made a day, each about 3 minutes long.

There was hard life. The museum display board has the following description summarizing the story: “50 daily dips in the sea, with all their associated difficulties made the joy of returning home more precious than the pearls collected by the captain in his ornate.”

The 3-minute diving made me wonder what we can do in the same period of time.

Cementing engineers can finish a mud displacement operation in a few hours. However, preparing a cementing job takes much longer than that, from slurry design, computer modeling to equipment arrangement. We have developed CEMPRO (mud displacement model) to reduce the time spent on job design stage. With CEMPRO, a cementing engineer can finish a job simulation within 3 minutes if he or she has necessary input data in hand.

Computer simulators like CEMPRO have allowed far better understanding of the cementing job than was previously possible. Many potential problems can be identified prior to the job and appropriate modification can be made.

CEMPRO - Mud displacement model

Computer program such as PVI software have amplified our skill and time so we can finish more tasks, such as completing cementing job modeling in 3 minutes.

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