A new drilling rig put into service by the Houston company Nabors Industries recently completed its first well in the Permian Basin, drilling to a depth of nearly 20,000 feet.
That might not seem like a big deal. But in this case, the task was accomplished without a single worker on the rig floor.
Nabors’ Pace-R801 is the world’s first fully automated land rig, and its introduction in West Texas marks a milestone in the automation of the oil and gas industry. Robots, such as the robotic arm that lifts and connects drill pipe on the new rig, are transforming the industry, promising to save billions of dollars while further shrinking a labor force that has shed tens of thousands of jobs in recent years — particularly oil field laborers.
At least one in five drilling jobs could be replaced by automation over the next decade, according to Rystad, a Norwegian energy research firm.
Robots are already widely used in offshore oil and gas. Remotely operated underwater vehicles with propellers and robotic arms roam the oceans, inspecting and cleaning equipment. Four-legged robotic “dogs” prowl offshore platforms, reading gauges and monitoring for methane leaks. On land, shale producers in West Texas use drones to detect gas leaks from wells and pipelines.
“This is the direction that the industry is heading and should head,” said Travis Purvis, Nabors’ senior vice president of global drilling. “This robotic technology really is game-changing. Over the next five to 10 years, it’s going to be really exciting to see the innovation that happens around that.”
Nabors’ autonomous rig is more evidence of the technological transformation — progress to some, disruption to others — that has taken place in many industries, including farming, manufacturing and banking. Big Oil, which has always relied on new technologies to extract more fossil fuels from the ground, is the latest to embrace robotics and automation.
The global pandemic accelerated adoption of robotics and automation, said Baker Hughes CEO Lorenzo Simonelli. The pandemic imposed social distancing requirements and financial pressures, which forced oil companies to turn to technology to keep employees safe and cut costs.
Many rigs and platforms in West Texas already are remotely controlled and operated from central offices in Houston. More than 90 percent of Baker Hughes’ wells are drilled using remote technology, up from about 60 percent two years ago, according to the Houston oil field services company.
“Digital allows you to go into remote operations so we can do the same activity that previously needed people in the field from a central location,” Simonelli said in an October interview. “Our customers were starting to adopt it, but when we got into the pandemic, you suddenly had the inability to move people as easily and freely.”
Added safety, fewer workers
Nabors, the world’s largest land drilling contractor with 10,000 employees, began developing its autonomous rig technology about five years ago to improve drilling efficiency and safety. In 2017, Nabors acquired Robotic Drilling Systems, a robotic drilling company.
Pace-R801, which was built in Houston, uses a combination of robotic hardware and automated software to drill a well. A blue robotic arm, called a pipe handler, lifts drill pipe horizontally up the rig, rotates and turns it vertically and spins it into place. Another robot “roughneck” on the rig floor connects the drill pipes and tightens them together.
Purvis said Nabors’ autonomous rig aims to make drilling safer by removing workers from the rig floor, where the combination of slippery mud and heavy equipment can lead to injury and death.
Although the Pace-R801 doesn’t have any workers on the rig floor, Purvis said the autonomous rig still requires humans to operate, including a drilling manager, control engineers and maintenance workers. The autonomous rig employs five or six workers, about the same number as Nabors’ traditional rigs, although some of these jobs require higher levels of education and training.
However, the rise of robots has raised concerns about the future of roughnecks on drilling rigs. Rystad estimates robotic drilling systems can speed the time it takes to drill a well by as much as 40 percent. The efficiency gains mean oil companies will need fewer rigs to drill wells and consequently, fewer workers.
The number of laborers on U.S. drilling rigs could decline by as much as 30 percent, or 140,000 workers by 2030, according to Rystad, saving U.S. oil producers more than $7 billion in wages.
“It will take time to replace the whole fleet of rigs,” said Audun Martinsen, Rystad’s head of energy service research. “Since these rigs still have to be proven, we don’t expect this technology to really take off until closer to 2030.”
Getting smaller
The oil industry’s robot revolution could compound job losses after recent oil busts.
Texas lost 60,000 drilling and extraction workers during the pandemic last year after the number of drilling rigs in Texas plunged by more than 60 percent to a record-low of 100. The state has recovered 25,900, or 43 percent, of those jobs lost as coronavirus vaccines have lifted economies.
The state has about 183,000 oil drilling and production workers, about 17 percent fewer than the 220,000 before the pandemic began in January 2020 and more than 35 percent below the 297,000 workers at their peak of employment in December 2014.
Exxon Mobil, which reduced its global workforce by 15 percent last year in response to the pandemic-driven oil bust, contracted with Nabors to drill three horizontal wells using the Pace-R801 rig.
The autonomous drilling contract was part of the Irving oil giant’s annual research and development of ways to increase operational safety and efficiency. The Texas oil major, which has remotely monitored its drilling rigs since the late 1980s, has significantly increased the number that are controlled remotely over the past two years.
Exxon said it has evaluated additional opportunities to deploy autonomous drilling technology, including in deepwater Guyana and on its Hebron platform near Newfoundland.
“We see the potential to move crews away from the rig floor, making drilling operations safer,” Exxon spokeswoman Sarah Nordin said. “This technology also has the potential to reduce the number of drilling days, increasing drilling efficiency and consistency.”
New skills
The Pace-R801 robotic arm eliminates the need for floorhands and derrickhands, who on traditional rigs move, guide, connect and drive drill pipe into the well. While robots would replace roughneck jobs, automation would create other jobs on rigs, such as engineers, supervisors and maintenance crews.
Purvis said autonomous drilling rigs free up workers to focus on other tasks and provide employees an opportunity to train for new jobs as electricians, mechanics and maintenance workers to operate this technology.
“We’re moving some of these positions around, and there are just different skill sets that are required, but we’re absolutely committed to giving opportunities to our employees to evolve and develop into those new roles,” Purvis said. “At the end of the day, these rigs have a fairly large footprint. It does require human intervention to move and maintain these rigs, so there will always be a human element.”
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