AI-Drill – Deliver Wells Faster and Safer

Drilling is a complex process with significant risks for offshore workers and represents around 30% of the total costs on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS). Optimizing drilling operations through new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) is therefore a high priority, as it can both enhance safety and reduce costs. In areas such as geothermal energy, subsurface CO2 sequestration, and hydrogen storage, efficient drilling technologies are even more critical. These applications are generally more cost-sensitive than traditional oil and gas operations, meaning that improvements in drilling performance can unlock substantial additional value. The future of drilling will increasingly rely on automation to improve safety by reducing the potential for human error. In the past, human errors stemming from either an inability or, at times, an unwillingness to act on early warning signals have contributed to catastrophic incidents in the oil industry, such as the Macondo accident in the Gulf of Mexico. AI Drill seeks to support this transition by developing specialized AI tools that automatically integrate knowledge from previous operations and provide real-time recommendations and warnings during drilling based on data interpretation. The project has developed solutions that improve communication flow during operations, assist with the interpretation of incidents, and streamline reporting. By incorporating explainable AI (XAI), physics-informed AI/ML (PIAI), and human-in-the-loop (HITL) techniques, the tools address a clear market gap: enabling transparency and trust in AI-driven insights. These capabilities can substantially reduce decision-making time in costly operations and help the industry transition from traditional complex physical models to modern data-driven solutions or hybrid approaches (physics-informed).