Transfer of experience for improved oil well drilling

The drilling process is getting increasingly more complex as oil fields mature and technology evolves. At the same time, the amount of information is increasing in volume and fr equency. Although technology is advancing, failures do occur, leading to loss of valuable time. When ever the process is running smoothly or is failing , valuable experience is gained . However, experience attrition is a well-docum ented problem. To take advantage of established and continually growing new experience a formalized methodolog y, case-based reasoning, was applied in a d ecision support system for capture and reuse of drilling operators’ experience. A case describes an episode during drilling, its circumstances and method to repair the problem. A general domain knowledge model, an on tology, supports the case-based process. In this paper we focus on ho w experience can be c aptured and transferred from different information sources and then stored in cases. It was demonstrated how the system was able to recommend how problems can be solv ed when they arise, while at the same time bridgin g the gap b etween new and experienced personnel. The quality of selecting the most relevant experience was proven through perform ance testing o f 62 field cases. The s ystem was used to identify root causes of pr oblems that had happened as well as to suggest repair actions.