Geothermal Drilling Training and Certification: Should It Be Different?

Abstract

One of the major challenges with developing geothermal resources is high drilling cost. Most of drilling training programs are focused on conventional systems, leaving at side specific aspects of geothermal drilling activities. The fundamentals of geothermal exploitation go hand-in-hand with those of oil and gas exploration and production. It is therefore logic to try and transfer the technology from one sector to the other. However, records for geothermal field developments do not exist in quantities comparable to those for the oil and gas sector. For example, fewer than 100 geothermal wells have been drilled per year in the USA in 2008 (mostly shallower than 2,800 m), as opposed to the thousands of oil and gas wells drilled each year in the same country. This lead to less experienced crews when geothermal specific situations occur. This paper shows the experience we gain through the use of the drilling simulator center available at OU consisting of 2 IADC and IWCF certified well control simulators, one NOV cyber chair based drilling simulator and the drilling dynamics experimental setup to perform critical simulations related to geothermal drilling applications. The novelty consists of the use the dedicated scenarios to train personal dealing with geothermal drilling or to verify known locations against new concepts used to minimize NPT. Our concept will focus on the HUMAN FACTOR as a central part of the information transfer, offering the highest level in identification of downhole drilling problems and teaching them the ability to react accordingly. The paper will show the importance to generate for the first time a pure geothermal centered training for drilling personal that could lead to faster and better geothermal drilling.