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Abstract The oil and gas industry faces pressure to reduce emissions and minimize fuel consumption to decrease the carbon footprint of drilling operations. Like other players in the sector, drilling contractors have made a commitment to achieving measurable improvements that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through the application of new technologies. The challenge is in identifying areas of operation with the greatest potential to deliver efficiency gains and finding ways to realize the reductions. In evaluating rig operations, it became clear that optimizing engine usage has the potential to deliver considerable cost savings and at the same time improve drilling performance. Ideally, this would mean automating the process, but automating drilling processes is not straightforward. It requires in-depth knowledge of rig operations and an understanding of the interplay between the driller, who controls the drilling process, and the generators that power the rig. One solution is to use artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze operational data to capture drilling insights that reliably predict power usage, ensuring operations can be executed as planned and that power demand never exceeds power availability. With the introduction of AI on AC drilling rigs, data monitored by the electronic drilling recorder (EDR) can be analyzed to correlate rig activities with power usage, enabling improvements in drilling efficiency and power management. Using AI changes the paradigm, making it possible to proactively forecast and deliver the correct amount of power to the rig as demand changes throughout the drilling process. This paper delves into the application of AI and automation of the power generation system to demonstrate its impact in revolutionizing drilling operations by forecasting and delivering power needs to deliver efficient drilling programs that use less fuel, produce lower emissions, extend equipment service life, and make fewer demands on the driller and rig crew.
Trueheart et al. (Tue,) studied this question.