The Significance of Drilling Data Management to Improve Geothermal Drilling Planning and Operation

Abstract

As one of the major cost components in geothermal exploration and development, an effective and cost-efficient geothermal drilling can greatly contribute to the success of whole geothermal project. Key factors in reducing drilling costs are optimising operations, utilising manpower to its fullest potential, and benchmarking with other drilling activities to evaluate one’s performance objectively. However, this is difficult if not impossible if the information of the previous drilling activities is not properly stored, thus making data query and analysis cannot be easily conducted. An optimum drilling campaign plan is difficult to create without lessons learned from previous operations. The significance of drilling data management and analysis have been a subject of study and discussion in the petroleum industry, but it is still not that common in geothermal drilling, especially in Indonesia. The purpose of this paper is to summarise the definition and examples of drilling data management in a more well-established industry such as oil and gas from various studies in the past, assess the advantages of having a proper drilling database or data management system, and how can the data be used for potentially improving future drilling operation. A case study of converting legacy data from previous drilling campaign of two geothermal fields in Java into a database is also discussed to demonstrate how legacy drilling data can be used to evaluate drilling performance.