A Norwegian technology company is making good on the promise of unmanned drillfloor operations. Russell McCulley gets a first-hand look at the topsides equipment that is bringing the goal of fully automated drilling closer to reality, including a recently delivered all-electric drillfloor robot.
In an unassuming workshop tucked away in an industrial park in Sandnes, near Stavanger, Lars Raunholt points out the key pieces of drillfloor equipment for the first automated robotic drilling rig — an electric roughneck, a multi-size elevator, a robotic pipe handler and an innovative drill floor robot. A fifth component — the robotic control system — ensures that the machines work together seamlessly.
Raunholt is founder and current vice president of business development at Robotic Drilling Systems (RDS), a technology development company on the forefront of automated drilling (not to be confused with RDS, the rig design specialist and engineering division of KCA Deutag).
The past decade has seen greater interest and important advances in the field, as operators seek more efficient and safer methods for drilling in increasingly harsh and remote areas, where margins for human error are narrow.
In September 2015, the first drillfloor robot to leave the RDS warehouse was delivered to the full-scale test site at the Ullrigg Drilling & Well Centre, a division of the International Research Institute of Stavanger (IRIS), which has identified automated drilling as a principal target area of research. The all-electric machine has a lifting capacity of 1500 kilograms at three metres extension, making it what RDS claims is the world’s strongest robot.
In-house engineering, combined with advances in robotics over the past decade, enabled RDS to build an electrically powered system with capacities traditionally achieved with hydraulics, says Raunholt.
RDS collaborated with US company Energid Technologies to develop what Raunholt terms the dynamic control system that operates the all-electric machines. “The biggest challenge, we came up with the solution ourselves. But we have been inspired by the robotics industry,” he says.
“We had to invent our own new software platform. It’s different from the automation that the oil industry knows today. It’s also one step farther than what the general robotics industry is using today,” which mostly concerns the ability to perform limited, repetitive tasks , he says.
The drillfloor robot was designed to replicate tasks performed by humans, often in adverse conditions, such as changing out tools. The technology is a significant step up from current systems, he says.
“When you hear about automatic or semi-automatic operations today, that’s really only when you handle drill pipe. You have people with joysticks making sure everything fits together, but that’s only with drill pipe. When you start handling other objects like stabilisers, crossovers and so on, then it’s very manual labour. That’s what we want to solve with the drillfloor robot — to be able to handle odd pieces weighing up to 1500 kilograms that you would normally need a winch and two people to put in place.”
Automation, Raunholt adds, increases the speed of operations as well as offering the precision and control needed to increase reliability and avoid errors.
While the drillfloor robot, roughneck, pipe handler and elevator can each be placed on a rig as a standalone piece of equipment, the combined system offers the most efficiency gains — up to 40 days in rig time annually, according to RDS calculations. “The idea here is that the system itself is a big benefit for the end user.”
Power shift
RDS grew out of the company Seabed Rig, founded in 2005 by Raunholt and a group of entrepreneurs to develop a remotely operated subsea drilling rig. The project received technical and financial support from Statoil, among others. But work on the seabed rig paused while RDS engineers pursued the more immediate demand for topsides automation.
RDS lined up some important financial and technical backers to develop the robotic drillfloor system, including Westcon Yards shipyard, the Norwegian technology investment organisation Investinor, Statoil Technology Invest and Odfjell Drilling, which acquired a 43% majority share in the company in 2014.
In an announcement at the time, Odfjell Drilling said the drillfloor technology represented “a huge potential to improve safety and efficiency in drilling operations”.
While the seabed rig concept is on hold for now, Raunholt says: “If we hadn’t started with that idea I don’t think we would have the philosophy that we have today. That made us think 100% unmanned, and gave us new thoughts about control systems and how these things should be done.”
The pipe handler, roughneck and elevator are all familiar drillfloor tools, but the RDS system applies some new technology to the equipment. The system’s pipe handler, for example, can pick up a horizontally stacked joint of pipe, raise it to a vertical position and move it to the well centre.
RDS’ elevator is a custom design with three inserts that can be changed automatically to fit different sizes of pipes, a procedure that ordinarily takes several minutes and human intervention.
Electric roughnecks have been on the drilling industry’s wishlist “for a number of years”, Raunholt says. “But there are certain challenges you have to overcome,” including the need for very high power to achieve sufficient torque, something more easily obtained with hydraulics.
“With good engineering skills we came up with a special all-electric solution,” he says. “But I also think time has been working for us. When you look at electric motors and the technology used in them, the development of that — what was not possible 10 years ago is now possible.”
Electrical power, he explains, “makes things much easier to control, and we think will make them reliable”. Electrical power also simplifies integration by replacing hydraulic lines with what is essentially a single plug and, in the case of the drillfloor robot, encasing the controls in a protective housing.
The result is machines with clean surfaces free of exterior sensors and cables and, Raunholt says, greater reliability in adverse environmental conditions.
Pilot programme
Following further testing, RDS plans to install the remaining system components on the Ullrigg test rig later this year, starting with the electric pipe handler. Next on the agenda is an offshore pilot of the drillfloor robot, most likely involving an Odfjell rig in the North Sea.
Raunholt says the system can be installed on almost any drillfloor but he notes that rigs operating in the most adverse conditions will realise the most gains in efficiency and safety.
“We’re looking at land applications, but in the beginning this will be an expensive solution. So I think that the worse the conditions, the greater the benefit.”
That makes the technology especially suited for Barents Sea and Arctic exploration, where conditions are extreme and drilling is expensive.
“When we look at the value proposition, it’s really the time that you save that is the big benefit,” he says.
The drillfloor robot is equipped with an apparatus for gripping and spinning pipe, but RDS is expanding the line of compatible tools, starting with a safety clamp tool now in development.
Eventually, Raunholt says, a suite of perhaps six basic tools will be part of the kit. The machine’s wireless interface makes switching tools simple and quick, he says.
The current industry downturn could delay widespread uptake of the technology, but it has done little to dampen enthusiasm for automated drilling. Operators are looking for ways to boost efficiency, reduce risk and lower carbon dioxide emissions, and the all-electric system offers advantages in each, Raunholt insists.
“We want to get the equipment out into the market, get the system tested together. I think that will generate a lot of interest,” he says.
“When we started ten years ago it was difficult to explain this kind of technology. But nowadays everybody says robotics is coming. There’s been a big change in attitude about it in the 10 years we’ve been working on this.”
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