AI Makes Room for Improvement in Drilling Operations

Artificial intelligence is reshaping how E&P operators approach drilling and completions, offering new opportunities to improve recovery rates while maintaining hard-won efficiencies. Read more about these advances in the article below.

Automation is changing the way E&P operators do their job.

Operators are looking to explore new approaches to completion that can increase recovery rates without sacrificing existing efficiencies, Matt Wilks, ProFrac Holding Co.’s executive chairman, said at Hart Energy’s DUG Permian Conference & Expo.

Automating and improving available technology can start with completions designs.

“Completion designs haven’t really changed a lot in the last three or four years,” Wilks said. “It’s been relatively copy-paste from the toe all the way to the heel. Automation opens up the ability to go in and start having a prescriptive approach to every lateral.”

The industry has “fought so hard for efficiencies that it’s easy to keep everything the same,” Wilks said.

But there is always room for improvement, he said.

“When you look at [it], we’re only recovering about 10% of the oil in place,” Wilks said. “How do we get more out of that? When you look at the lateral, are we even completing 100% of the lateral?”

And with crude prices having dropped significantly in 2025, operators are looking for ways to cut costs and improve recovery. AI can help with that.

By incorporating AI into the design phase, E&P companies can create a “dynamic completion design that responds to the formation that you’re working with” and help to bring the drilling cost structure down, said Wilks.

“It’s incredible what you can do with AI,” Wilks said.

John Caldwell, HSB Solomon Associates’ senior technical advisor for upstream, also advised attendees to have an integrated approach to automation in well operations.

“We’re talking about a fully integrated operations control center,” Caldwell said. “Where you actually have a real, live, 24/7 real-time connection with your midstream takeaway, as well as with your office.”

A real-time connection with both the midstream takeaway and the office will allow operators to monitor volumes and coordinate with the drilling and completion program to optimize the volumes of fluids and gases, added Caldwell.

And connectivity for remote operations has increased over the last few years with the expansion of satellite internet, Caldwell said.

“Satellite communication may be cheaper than trying to put up towers everywhere,” Caldwell said.

As for an industrywide concern of automation taking over jobs, in some cases, reducing the number of people on a rig is a good thing, said Leianne Sanclemente, Superior Energy Services’ senior vice president for technology.

“Those corporations, they want people out of it, for safety reasons, like out of the red zone and things like that,” Sanclemente said.

Source: https://www.hartenergy.com/technology-and-innovation/artificial-intelligence/he-ai-improvements-completions-drilling-operations/