“Human-free drilling” — is it possible or even desirable?

In an age of extreme safety-consciousness following the Macondo oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, minimizing hazards is a top industry priority.

Accordingly, the International Association of Drilling Contractors’ World Drilling 2011 conference prominently featured a segment on its first day of the two-day annual gathering on what it called “human-free drilling”: automation of as many routine drilling tasks as possible.

Actually, “human-free” may not be possible or even desirable since people will always be needed to make the decisions that machines can’t, according to a panel that included automation experts from Maersk Drilling, big independent E&P operator Apache Corp, big oil services purveyor National Oilwell Varco and a rising research engineer from Norway’s International Research Institute of Stavanger. But automation does promise to take the sweat out of what is now very muscle-intensive employment, and brainy it up a bit.

It really amounts to smarter and ultimately more cost-effective drilling. It is taking humans away from the rote and often potentially dangerous grunt work and putting them in places where they can perform and direct tasks via remote controls. It transfers jobs from purely manual labor to the technician category. And although the panel didn’t mention this, it might require fewer workers, although it might also lift salaries for those who get to operate the automated stations.

Jim Rogers, automation adviser for worldwide drilling at Apache, noted that being struck by objects dropped from heights is among the most common work site fatalities. Despite this, drillers routinely work underneath cranes “that can fall at any time,” Rogers said.

“Why can’t we take the doghouse and move it 50 meters away?” he said. “If we instrument newbuild rigs to where we can see what’s going on with the rig [at a distance], we can relocate a work crew and get them away from the hazards.”

Panelists noted other industries have automated hazardous jobs. For instance, the auto industry decades ago dealt with toxic spray-painting chemicals by replacing humans with robots which provides better consistency, quality and safety. And the defense industry 50 years ago used human pilots for in-air dogfights but now has unmanned drone planes which can be operated remotely.

But unlike the auto industry, many tasks that can be automated for oil drilling are not 100% predictable, according to Svein Ove Aanesland, product line director of control systems for National Oilwell Varco. While simple repetitive tasks can be automated, analytical decisions need human interaction, Aanesland said.

It may seem surprising that machines have not replaced much or even some of the work performed by roughnecks or other rig floor hands, but panelists said the reasons are not for lack of knowledge, standards, technology or incentives. Instead, the chief obstacle is that people keep doing the same thing because they it’s the way they’ve always done it.

But automation’s day is coming. The Gulf of Mexico’s Macondo oil spill last year raised the urgency of worker safety exponentially, and the recent economic recession gave cost savings added cachet.  So panelists said the day is not far off where automation will play a greater role in the life of rig workers.

In the meantime, though, accommodation designs on the newest rigs designs being submitted to shipyards suggest they are being built to house more, not fewer, crew members.

For example, Rowan Companies’ design of two state-of-the-art drillships the company recently announced it would build for $655 million apiece contains housing facilities for 220 people each, versus a standard 160-200, Rowan CEO Matt Ralls said on the conference sidelines.

“I think all operators continue to look at more capacity on their boats,” Ralls told Platts. “The issue is always third-party service people and more geoscientists that come out and stay awhile. We’re putting everything on there we think will increase safety.”

Platts