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The exploration sector heads into 2020 facing increasing pressure from the energy transition. The shift to a low-carbon world poses a fundamental challenge...

New view of safety, accountability looks beyond enforcing procedural discipline to causes of non-conformance and how to manage variability in job execution By Marcin Nazaruk, Baker Hughes “Failed to follow procedure” is a common root cause from incident investigations in the oil and gas industry. Such a finding reinforces a belief that procedural conformance is a source of safety and success. Therefore, the apparently obvious conclusion is we need to get better at enforcing procedural discipline to prevent such incidents in the future. After all, procedures represent the best way to carry out activities. Experts develop procedures to guard against the errors and mistakes of fallible human operators who may have limited competence and experience. Compliance should be enforced to ...

By Linda Hsieh, Editor & Publisher In the North American unconventionals, much of the last cycle of performance improvements can be ascribed to drilling contractors’ investments in rig hardware – think about the increased horsepower and racking capacities on today’s super-spec rigs, as well as the addition of walking systems. Unfortunately, in a hyper-competitive downturn market like we’ve seen in the past few years, much of that investment has been commoditized. As drilling contractors embark on the next step-change in drilling performance – which will likely come from the digital realm – they will be much more careful to not let that happen again. Several speakers at the automation session of a major industry conference late last year made this clear: The ...

The exploration sector heads into 2020 facing increasing pressure from the energy transition. The shift to a low-carbon world poses a fundamental challenge...

Shell’s Cindy Taff: Data and real-time centers can help to achieve this by allowing best practices to be widely applied, regardless of individual experience at well site By Linda Hsieh, Editor & Publisher Cindy Taff is VP Unconventional Wells & Logistics for Shell. From your role at Shell, what do you see as the biggest challenges that the drilling industry faces in 2020 and beyond? Two challenges come to mind. The first is the reputation of the industry. It is our license to operate, and it impacts our ability to attract and retain staff. I think that we have to work even harder to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and develop alternative energy sources. We really have to be much more proactive about ...