Of offshore’s greatest hits, which is the biggest?
For some, remotely operated vehicles are the most significant advance, but for others it’s horizontal drilling or technology to deal with ocean swells
The offshore drilling industry has long been considered a driver of technological advances that have unlocked oil and gas resources in some of the world’s most complex drill sites.
But it can be hard to pick — much less understand — which technical breakthroughs have most transformed the industry since the first version of an offshore rig was put in the water in 1962. Was active heave compensation more revolutionary or the invention of remotely operated underwater vehicles? The invention of top drive or the dawn of horizontal drilling?
The answer depends on whom you ask.
Wafik Beydoun, chairman of the 2018 Offshore Technology Conference, voted for remotely operated underwater vehicles, or ROVs.
The devices, Beydoun argued, made underwater oil and gas drilling possible and allowed the industry to rely on robots to reduce risk to workers.
“ROVs have probably been the single most important development in terms of impact on the offshore industry,” said Beydoun, who is also chairman of Total Kuwait, a subsidiary of the French oil major Total.
But for Hege Kverneland, chief technology officer of the Houston equipment maker National Oilwell Varco, the first technology that comes to mind is active heave compensation, which gave floating rigs the ability to compensate for ocean swells that disrupted drilling. The technology was developed in the 1960s but was refined in the late 1990s.
Horizontal and multilateral drilling — which involves drilling more than one horizontal offshoot from the main vertical well — revolutionized onshore and offshore oil and gas production.
The technology enabled greater exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. The improvements in seismology, when paired with oil and gas exploration, also allowed the industry to uncover massive oil fields in deep waters around the world.
The technology has progressed from two- to four-dimensional seismic data, which incorporates length, width, depth and time.
While Kverneland can list several major tech upgrades over the years — many invented by National Oilwell Varco — she is particularly focused on the improvements to come.
The company has begun to invest in technologies that will make its various rig parts smart, or able to learn from data they collect to tell operators if they are malfunctioning.
“Digitalization is going to be the next big thing,” she said.