History of Lean Drilling™, Lean Producing™ and Lean Hydrocarbon Development™
Lean Drilling™ was developed in 1994. It was first applied to the BP Andrew project with great success on the wells (construction and management) and subsequently production operations.
Recommendations from BP led to application of Lean Drilling™ to the wells on Hibernia and to the complete project using Lean Hydrocarbon Development™ (subsurface, wells, facilities – platform / pipeline / gas plant) for a joint venture between Cairn Energy and Brown and Root. This offshore gas project in Bangladesh was developed based on two exploration wells and brought on stream in 17 months – a record fast track.
British Gas E&P used de Wardt and Company scenario planning and Lean Drilling™ to develop a strategy for exploration drilling worldwide which yielded a 30% improvement in performance year on year.
Lean Drilling™ has been extensively applied in Norway to establish a new level of performance across the industry. The first application was the BP Barden exploration well which yielded a 65% improvement in drilling performance with 100% data acquisition of high quality and a fully integrated sub-surface / drilling team. This was repeated for BP with a different rig and prospect then with Saga Petroleum for the deepest water wildcat well offshore Norway. The first development well application was on the very difficult Amoco Valhall project which contains active faults in the overburden and flowing chalk in a depleted reservoir, producing best ever drilling performance from the platform on the first well with significantly increased production in the second well. The joint bp / Amoco Norway chose Lean Drilling™ as its tool to achieve across the board drilling and completion performance improvement (World Class Drilling Process) and subsequently was awarded a prize for Most Improved Business Unit Wells Team.
Statoil selected Lean Drilling™ as the tool to drive improved performance across the company in a strategic program. This has been very successful with results exceeding technical limit in drilling and doubling of production rates. This new way of working is now embedded in Statoil’s standard wells planning and management processes.
TotalFinaElf Norge selected Lean Abandonment™ as the program to drive improved performance in their sub sea and platform abandonment programs; success has included a 43% improvement in time and a demonstration that 66% improvement is possible.
The application of Lean Drilling™ to the Mad Dog project has yielded best in class results, taking just 21 days per 10,000 ft to drill a deepwater, sub salt well. The team achieved BP's highest "Beyond the Best" rating , the peer ranking of Best in Class organization and the rating as the first fully integrated schedule across a complete project.
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Testimonials
His insight into the oil and gas industry is invaluable, and his knowledge of best practice in manufacturing has added measurable value to several of our investments.
His recent corporate strategy development work resulted in a set of strategic initiatives that are already beginning to deliver value only a few months into their implementation.
We have seen significant improvements in results and have adopted the principles in our planning and operations efforts.
...substantial improvement in product delivery and resultant reductions of inventory. The catalyst for these new processes was the Strategic Planning workshop lead by John de Wardt.
John de Wardt provided us with a straight forward, hard driving, no nonsense approach to strategic planning that is still helping us define and achieve new business goals.
John’s emphasis on rigorous planning has resulted in tangible and measurable results in the area of drilling and completing wells. A true step-change.
Case Studies
World Class Wildcat Deepwater Well in N Sea
In July 1999, Saga Petroleum (now Norske Hydro) completed their 4103m remote "Gjallar," wildcat well in 1352m water depth. The well was planned using DE WARDT AND CO's Lean Drilling program and achieved a performance result significantly ahead of other deepwater operators (see plot on left). The results for this project are best described by this quotation from an IADC/SPE paper (#51980) published by Flemming Stene of Hydro (formerly Saga) and Peter Aird of Kingdom Drilling. "To optimize the planning process and make further improvements, Saga engaged John de Wardt to apply his Lean Drilling program. This is a planning method based on giving 'ownership' of the project to all involved parties; in the operator, drilling contractor and service companies, both offshore and onshore. Each party is required to take full responsibility for their input, both in the planning and execution phase, in contrast to the usual approach in which 'ownership' is concentrated mainly on those in charge in the operating company. De Wardt's method also puts great emphasis on risk management and contingency planning. The planning process continued until spud in early June 1999, a duration of 3 months." Significant reduction in non-productive time was achieved in the most challenging section - see diagram on right.
Consistently Differentiated Performance
The application of Lean Drilling to the Norwegian operations of bp, TotalFinaElf, Statoil and Saga (now Norske Hydro) has differentiated the drilling performance of these operators when compared to their internal and external peers. With daily drilling costs in this region ranging from $150,000 to $350,000, the savings achieved are worth many millions of dollars. The plot on the left presented to the AADC in Houston on November 13, 2001 shows the step change achieved by bp Norway in comparison to their regional peers. The plot on the right shows how the clients of DE WARDT AND COMPANY achieved the best performance on a comparison of depth versus time for all Norwegian deep-water exploration wells.