To transform a desert into a 1.2 million-barrel-per-day oil facility takes one of the largest mega-projects in oilfield history. To get that oil from deep beneath the sand, the Khurais Drilling Department was tasked with drilling 310 wells to bring Saudi Arabia’s second-largest oil field into production.
The drilling was slated to take three years, but improvements in operations and engineering mean the job was done in February - 10 months ahead of schedule. One key to the success was the enthusiasm of the project’s employees and contractors.
“This is a first-class achievement,” said department manager Ali H. Al-Ghamdi. “But I attribute it to the family spirit we have created for Saudi Aramco employees and their contractor partners.”
A combination of efficiency and empowerment has gotten the job done. Khurais is the first mega-project to put all the administration for drilling under one roof.
The asset-management approach has both Drilling Engineering and Operations working with numerous other groups such as Wellsites, Water Well Maintenance, Drilling and Cementing Services and rig contractor representatives, who are all a few steps from one another.
“The original plan called for 16 rigs run by three divisions based on a three-year completion date,” said general supervisor Fahad A. Al-Bani. “We’ve been able to do the work with 12 rigs in two divisions in two years’ time.”
When Al-Ghamdi was given the drilling project, he saw it as a unique opportunity to try a new approach. “I spent 13 years as a service provider to oil companies. I realized that the best results were achieved when both the contractor and the oil company worked hand in hand,” he said.
He said that having a team in place that can handle day-to-day operations with less supervision ensures that the manager has time to deal with serious issues when they arise, and it also gives him time to work on staff development and other strategic needs.
Another big change is the asset management concept.
“We made sure that all barriers between Engineering and Operations were immediately broken down,” Al-Ghamdi said. “Our offices are set up so we have the engineering supervisor and the superintendent who are handling the same rigs sharing a clerk in the same office, so they work together much closer than they work with their boss. We deliberately put the manager’s and the general supervisor’s offices about 30 meters away.”
This new way of doing things has earned the acceptance of many employees. “The asset management team allows Bandar Al-Malki, the drilling supervisor, and me to communicate better,” said Ibrahim H. Al-Alq, drilling superintendent for one of the asset management teams. “Without the asset-management approach, the hierarchy would be different, and the decision-making process would not be efficient enough for our fast-paced drilling operations. With our setup, Bandar and I are in direct communication.”
It’s not just the main office people who are seeing the benefits. “They’ve created a very good matrix for this job, starting with upper management and going down the people who are following the work in detail,” said Abualhuda M. Abualhuda, a rig foreman for Sinopec. “There is no break in communication between the matrix members; otherwise, the work would not go smoothly. It is one chain.”
Abualhuda noted that the ideas aren’t all that new but said the follow-through makes a world of difference.
“Things are going very well because of the system and how it’s been implemented. Other places you find the system, but it’s not implemented as well. The complete matrix keeps things running smoothly everywhere,” he said. “They plan for the drilling to take 30 days, but with good communication between all the members and improvement in the work, most of the time we finish the job ahead of the planned time.”
Even contractor partners are seeing a world of difference. In fact, Halliburton is adopting this new system as a best practice.
“We’ve come in 10 months ahead of time on a three-year project; we’ve brought the wells down from 40 days to about 25 days, and the number of hours of down time has been reduced considerably,” said Alex von Breymann, Halliburton’s Khurais project manager. “At some point, you don’t really work for Saudi Aramco or Halliburton anymore, you belong to the project, and you look at the project at the entity you want to progress, which is a big change for both sides.”
“This is the first time that Sperry Sun has interacted this closely with Saudi Aramco, and it’s worked great,” said veteran driller Paul Downey, an employee of the Halliburton subsidiary who is sharing office space with the Drilling Department.
“We’ve never been in a situation anywhere I’ve worked in the world where we’ve all worked in the same office. … We drill 24 hours a day, so we’re always available, and with them here, we can get together at any time for any situation and deal with it. You don’t have to look for anybody; everybody’s right here.”
Despite the remote location of Khurais, employees of Saudi Aramco and contractor partners said they would be a little sad when the project winds up because they will miss the no-nonsense approach that has enabled them to achieve so much.
“When you’re this close to people, your relationship becomes real. We see each other in all kinds of situations all the time, and our relationships have gotten stronger,” Sperry Sun’s Downey said. “I can honestly say that I don’t want it to end. I wish we had another 300 holes to drill here.”
