Marathon Oil (PI System)

Marathon Oil is the international oil and gas company which is engaged in exploration and production of hydrocarbons, founded in 1887 with the headquarters to Houston, the State of Texas. As you know, that year in the USA the prototype of the modern automobile engine was invented. From 1889 to 1911 the company was a part of Standard Oil trust of John D. Rockefeller. The company has divisions in Europe and in Africa, locates assets in Scotland, Norway, on islands of Equatorial Guinea.

The Marathon Oil company began to use information infrastructure of PI System in 1987, and the founder of the Oil Systems Incorporated company afterwards renamed into OSIsoft - doctor Patrick Kennedy was the first sales manager of OSIsoft company who worked with Marathon Oil.

Full use of PI System in division of exploration and production of hydrocarbons Marathon Oil began in 2005, and in 2006 the first systems were implemented on objects in Norway and Equatorial Guinea.

Initially, as it also became at all oil processing enterprises, the company used PI System only as servers of contemporary records. Afterwards in Marathon Oil implemented the full strategy of use of PI System as information infrastructure in scales of all company, including the overworking and extracting assets.

In 2011 Marathon was separated into two companies that quite often happens in the oil and gas industry. One of the companies which appeared as a result of separation was called by Marathon Oil, and it included the enterprises which are engaged in exploration and production of hydrocarbons. The enterprises for processing and sale were a part of the second company - Marathon Petroleum, and today in the divisions of this company which are responsible for processing and transportation of raw materials 9 copies of PI System are set. At the Marathon Oil enterprises 3 copies of PI System at the moment function.

A few years ago the Marathon Oil company realized the MaraDrill™ project which purpose was an optimization of time of drilling, increase in efficiency and reduction of capital costs. The MaraDrill technology implemented on the basis of PI System showed advantages of use of the data obtained with a high frequency of sampling from drilling rigs. The analysis of these data allows to cope with such problems as undesirable vibration which results from the phenomenon of "sticking slipping" of a boring chisel, in particular.

Use of MaraDrill technology leads to significant increase in speed of drilling and, as a result, reduction of time from a zaburivaniye to reaching the final depth of the well that as a result allows to reduce well-drilling terms thanks to the data on process arriving in real time.

The MaraDrill technology implemented based on PI System represents fundamental shift in the field of optimization of operations on exploration and production.

30 drilling rigs located in the territory of the USA which Marathon Oil rents at Helmerich & Payne company for drilling of horizontal wells on the land are a part of the MaraDrill project. Drill floors of the company are in three oil-and-gas areas: the Eagle Ford field (the southern part of Texas), the Bakken field (in Northern Dakota, near border between the USA and Canada), the Woodford field (in the State of Oklahoma).

As we already noted, the high frequency of updating of technology data — approximately time per second is necessary for effective management of process of drilling. The diagram with discretization of receipt of these 20 seconds which is seen by the driller in the cabin is provided in the lower part of figure 1. At such temporary permission parameters of technology process are not really informative because of the possible admission and smoothing of peak values. Some vendors provide to specialists of Marathon Oil data with resolution of 10 seconds (the average diagram). MaraDrill through PI System and PI Coresight collects, stores and displays the data arriving with sampling in 1 second that provides their maximum reliability (the upper diagram).

Data from drilling rigs come to PI System by two different methods (Figure 2): through a corporate communication network of Marathon Oil, i.e. through a network architecture of data collection directly on the oil field, and via public communication satellites. All data through a communication tower in Houston come to PI System and become available both for individual users of a system, and for applications which are used by these data in the work.

Marathon Oil is used by 4 different methods of visualization and the analysis of the obtained data. Users in corporate network Marathon Oil use PI Datalink or PI Coresight on the PCs, mobile users use the version of PI Coresight for iPad and iPhone. For display of events the component, most convenient for Marathon Oil, - PI System Explorer is used. Besides, now very demanded means of visualization for Marathon Oil is the TIBCO SpotFire platform giving great opportunities for expanded data analysis.

As we already noted early, one of serious problems leading to heavy losses when drilling is the so-called phenomenon "sticking slipping" of a boring chisel ('stick-slip'). To understand the nature of this phenomenon, it is necessary to provide the electric drill which drill a wall from gypsum cardboard, at the same time the drill rotates, but does not go deep into a wall. Approximately the same occurs underground at effect "sticking slipping". It results in wear and more frequent replacement of a chisel, need of additional rises and descents of the boring tool, and, as a result, to additional energy costs. We see display of this phenomenon in PI Coresight in Figure 4.

Identification of the phenomenon of "sticking slipping" of a chisel is one of main advantages of use of MaraDrill technology in Marathon Oil company which allows to prevent this problem and to increase efficiency of drilling.

Except obvious advantages on cost reduction, the MaraDrill technology allows to integrate the data collected by PI System with data of a system of complete lifecycle of the WellView wells in which all information on well-drilling, such as type of rocky breeds through which it is necessary to pass when drilling, or the number of the days spent for drilling of this well, a vista shot of the field is stored. In figure 5 at the left we see the screen PI Coresight form constructed on the basis of the integrated data that allows to browse exact parameter values in the necessary range at any stage of drilling operations. Besides, it is possible to select an exact period on a trend and to export all data for this interval to the XML document for further use in TIBCO Spotfire. Data streams at integration of two corporate solutions of PI System and WellView are shown in figure 5 on the right.

The MaraDrill technology thanks to the detailed analysis of all events which took place when drilling the specific well allows to reduce well-drilling time considerably. In Figure 6 reduction of time from a well zaburivaniye to reaching complete depth in the field Eagle Ford in the Southern Texas is shown. In 2012 and 2013 of Marathon Oil company it was succeeded to improve the indicators more than for 50% and to reduce time of drilling of the well from 24 to 12 days. Apparently, for the end of 2013 drilling duration in 12 days remained within three quarters in a row.

Among all analyzed events separately it should be noted the analysis of events for determination of efficiency of drilling which is carried out by means of the description of an object model to PI Asset Framework and selection of events in PI Event Frames.

Drilling, as well as other transactions in the oil and gas industry, is performed 24 hours 7 days a week, one boring crew works 12 hours in the afternoon, other crew works 12 hours during a night shift. Each boring crew has 7 working days and 7 days off. At such approach there is an opportunity all events to separate into groups: events of drilling, event of connection and others. If depth of the well increases, then this effective event. Inefficient events are understood as all necessary transactions which do not lead to increase in depth of the well, for example, accession of an additional pipe. By means of the analysis of effective and inefficient events comparison is carried out and it becomes clear what drilling contractor and what command is the best and why.

How it is possible to construct an object model of PI Asset Framework proceeding from these conditions?

First of all, as a basic element of an object model the drilling rig is accepted, for each installation it is created from 20 to 30 attributes parameters arriving from PI System of times second or is more often. The main event for the drilling rig is the process of drilling of the well lasting 12-14 days. To the drilling rig there will correspond the PI Asset Framework element, and each well – an event in PI Event Frames.