((Automated translation by Reuters, please see disclaimer https://bit.ly/rtrsauto))
(Second paragraph corrects spelling of name, please read Abdellah, not Abdelah) by Curtis Williams
A top executive at Schlumberger NV (SLB), the world’s largest energy services company, predicted Monday that autonomous drilling of oil and gas wells would outpace self-driving cars in the market and create new efficiencies for oil producers. oil.
Autonomous drilling is ready for adoption by many major oil companies, Abdellah Merad, executive vice president of SLB, said at the Offshore Technology Conference.
“We think we will be able to drill almost autonomously before we can even drive autonomously,” Mr. Merad said at the conference. “We already have many large customers, NOCs (National Oil Companies) IOCs (International Oil Companies) and large independents who are on the path to automation and autonomous drilling,” he said.
Autonomous drilling will increase efficiency and, through the use of artificial intelligence, enable improvements in the quality of wells, with each one an improvement over the next, he added.
In January, SLB announced that it and Equinor EQNR.OL had drilled a well of more than 2.5 kilometers in Brazil using autonomous control mode, which increased the penetration rate by 60%, to accelerate well delivery while reducing costs and carbon emissions.
“Fewer people on site, it’s safer, it will be reliable,” Mr Merad told Reuters on the sidelines of the OTC conference.
