Oil and gas drilling company Nabors has acquired engineering technology firm, MindMesh. The acquisition includes the downhole simulation and modeling technologies that the MindMesh team has developed.
Additionally, MindMesh co-founder and chief technology officer Raju Gandikota joined Nabors as a Director in the Controls and Automation group.
Plans are in the works to integrate several digital modeling and visualization technologies complementary to Nabors’ Smart Suite of drilling automation and digitalization products.
Brett Schellenberg, Nabors vice president of digital solutions, says: “The technologies Raju and his team developed will rapidly advance our ability to predict drilling dysfunctions in real time, improve customer experience and drive a competitive edge.
“There is a significant degree of variability that still exists in drilling. That is a challenge we need to overcome. MindMesh has a product that can be integrated into and enhance our existing performance tools.”
Gandikota says he is “excited” about the possibilities: “There are endless opportunities to leverage Nabors’ vast data to create actionable business value.”
Nabors has worked with Gandikota and his MindMesh team for almost a decade. MindMesh’s digital engineering platform, RiMo, consumes critical data and leverages physics, AI- and ML-driven models and data visualization.
The RiMo Real-Time Digital Twin platform seamlessly performs multiple workflows: from planning to using data-driven simulation and predictive analytics to solve drilling dysfunctions in real time. RiMo also offers post-job analytics in one consistent workflow.
Schellenberg says: “One goal for 2023 is to embed a basic engineering workstation leveraging MindMesh into the RigCLOUD ecosystem.”
Nabors’ RigCLOUD open platform is uniquely designed to host drilling and analytics software at the rig site, on the web and mobile devices.
Most of the modeling today relies on users inputting information; developing a predictive and prescriptive product enables more robust testing in a lab environment.
Schellenberg says: “Testing in a lab environment accelerates innovation, saves cost, and improves time to market.
“Additionally, smaller customers with less capital benefit can de-risk a project before any drilling takes place.”
Another critical component of modeling and simulation is the ability to understand the health of the equipment and improve its reliability and performance in the field.
Gandikota says: “We collect a lot more data than we need, and we can scale software easier than hardware to close the knowledge gap.
“The idea is to get to TD as quickly as possible without breaking tools. The goal is to tell the story, build computer-based models with time in mind, predict downhole activity and drilling performance with basic information, and develop actionable drilling roadmaps by digitally drilling wells on a computer.”
