Towards Autonomous Coiled Tubing Operations

Norway has several thousand offshore wells that need to be maintained and eventually plugged in the coming years. New wells are being drilled for oil and gas production and other purposes, such as CO2 storage and geothermal energy extraction. Future maintenance and plugging of wells represent a significant cost for Norway, in the order of several hundred billion kroner. Globally, the market for such operations is a multi-billion dollar industry. Within well construction, new technologies have been developed, and increasing levels of digitalization are being utilized to reduce costs, improve safety, and enhance efficiency. Norway has been a pioneer in the development and utilization of such technology for the petroleum industry. The research institute NORCE, Norwegian Research Centre, has contributed to leading research and technology advancements and, among other things, developed and demonstrated a system for autonomous drilling operations in 2021. However, in the maintenance and plugging of wells, often carried out using so-called coiled tubing, the opportunities offered by digitalization and automation have not been fully exploited. There is significant untapped potential that could lead to large savings, increased safety, and substantial efficiency gains if efforts to enhance competence and develop new technology succeed in the coming years. This project addresses precisely this need for knowledge and technology and will deliver research results that form the foundation for autonomous well operations using coiled tubing. Advanced computational models will be developed and verified against experimental data. These models will form the basis for advanced methods of event detection and handling in automated, and eventually autonomous, coiled tubing operations. The project is led by NORCE and is carried out in collaboration with the University of Stavanger, the University of Clausthal in Germany, and several energy companies.

The international coiled tubing (CT) market is expanding, driven by the need to enhance production from aging fields and increasing demands for well intervention and plug and abandonment (P&A). Despite advancements in digitalization and automation, CT technology is still underdeveloped compared to jointed pipe operations, where autonomous drilling has been successfully demonstrated. This project is poised to bridge this gap, advancing the knowledge and technological foundations necessary to unlock the full potential of CT operations, with an emphasis on conveyance and drilling operations. The project addresses several interlinked, technological, and knowledge-based challenges that we have grouped into three main work packages: (1) Process understanding and modeling, (2) model calibration and digitalization, and (3) automation and autonomy. The novelty of this project lies in (1) a higher fidelity of the resulting simulation model compared to state-of-the-art, while (2) suitable calibration routines are developed, and (3) novel automated functions are developed and integrated into a fully autonomous system. All these three aspects are ambitious, and major challenges need to be addressed, requiring knowledge beyond current state-of-the-art within all aspects. We believe that the proposed advancements, combined with in-depth competence in modern autonomous jointed pipe drilling systems, will make this possible.