Stena Drilling Redefining Performance

As a leading drilling contractor, Stena Drilling has been a trusted partner for oil and gas operators since 1989, delivering high-quality services to clients around the world. The company's core values - Care, Innovation, and Performance shape the company's approach to every aspect of its business, from caring for its employees, clients, and the environment, to driving innovation and continuously improving operational performance.

This focus on ‘Performance’ is a guiding principle for Stena Drilling who recognise that improving performance as a drilling contractor is critical to meeting the evolving needs of their clients and maintaining a competitive edge in the drilling industry. Managing a global business, consisting of five ultra-deepwater drillships and two semi-submersible rigs, Stena Drilling continually challenges itself to consistently deliver safe and efficient drilling activities for their clients around the world.

To achieve this Stena Drilling has led the way in offshore innovation across decades of business activities. Examples of this innovative business focus include the organisation’s commitment to Managed Pressure Drilling [MPD] operations, allowing them to deliver over 30x wells in a safer and more efficient manner using MPD technology. By developing a unique service model and installing fully integrated MPD-proven systems on board their entire drillship fleet, Stena Drilling can provide reliable and repeatable performance for global oil and gas companies.

“Stena Drilling’s MPD service continues to go from strength to strength with more clients securing our MPD capable rigs to improve safety and efficiency and reduce costs. We’ve now delivered 30 deepwater wells for our clients across our fleet of 4 MPD capable drillships and by the end of this year will have all four vessels engaged in MPD operations simultaneously.”

Nick Ward, MPD

As part of Stena Drilling’s continuous improvement methodology, the company recently underwent an exercise challenging what ‘industry-leading performance’ is and how this can be achieved for their clients. This process involved the entire organisation and established a clear framework outlining five enabling focus areas of performance (Health Safety & Environment [HSE], Operations, Equipment Reliability/Maintenance, Subsea, and Emission Reduction). Importantly, the process also identified the needs of the business to implement this updated performance improvement process. A dedicated performance team was established with the sole focus of leading performance improvement initiatives across the whole business, supporting strategic objectives, and improving Stena Drilling’s offering to their clients.

The multi-departmental performance team aligns internal focus and ensures projects are viewed holistically to understand and fully consider the overall advantages of improvements. For example, a project under Operations performance may have positive impacts on HSE performance, reliability/maintenance, and Emissions performance. This approach differs from the conventional assumption that performance is solely focused on improving critical path drilling activities.

That being said, the improvement on critical path flat time activities has been immediate for Stena Drilling by focussing on the areas identified. As an example, improved operating procedures developed with a performance focussed mindset have resulted in a 27% improvement in drill pipe tripping flat time performance and a 27% reduction in the time taken to perform drilling connections whilst ensuring the safety of the drillship crew remained paramount.

It is important to reinforce that increased operational performance must not come at the detriment of HSE performance on board. It is only possible to achieve industry-leading operational performance when there is a strong HSE culture that is reinforced across the entire organisation. This strong focus on a positive HSE culture has resulted in excellent historical HSE performance and Stena Drilling are regularly recognised as an industry leader for HSE.

This is achieved by ensuring crews are informed and have the correct tools, equipment, policies, and procedures to enable them to perform their job to the best of their abilities. As an example, an HSE performance improvement Stena has implemented was the development of their own in-house behavioural-based safety system: Care (Continuously Assessing Risk Everyday) Observations. Using AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology Stena Drilling automatically assess and categorise observations as they come in providing Stena Drilling’s Operational teams with leading indicators to identify focus areas and drive the improvement of certain policies and procedures.

Equipment reliability and maintenance was identified as another focus area by the performance team. It was recognised that to achieve the required visibility internally regarding equipment reliability and performance transparent communication was required to allow for any issues to be addressed. To that end, Stena Drilling use Kongsberg’s KognifAI system to aid in real-time data visualisation from over 1,300 sensors on board their drilling units located all over the world. The KognifAI system allows them to visualise and live stream data onshore directly from their fleet allowing subject matter experts to conduct an in-depth analysis of each unit’s performance and identify any areas of improvement. Using the data derived from the KognifAI system has allowed for the optimisation of planned maintenance routines resulting in reliability improvements for equipment on board. An additional benefit of tracking data from a combination of sensors using the KognifAI system and manual data input has allowed Stena Drilling to improve in another focus area identified by the performance team: Emission Reductions. By optimising equipment usage and managing energy consumption, Stena Drilling has been able to exceed their performance targets for the reduction in the environmental footprint across the entire Stena Drilling fleet in 2021 & 2022.

Using the five internal focus areas identified it was recognised that for the improvement of the operation, active collaboration with clients was essential. This collaboration aimed to harness the expertise and experience between teams to enable improvement projects to progress effectively and efficiently. It was found that by working closely with counterparts from the operator priority projects could be identified and often fast-tracked. This has included significant equipment modifications designed to improve performance against one or more of the focus areas. Examples include emission reduction upgrades such as the installation of Reverse Osmosis units on Stena Carron and Stena Don, the installation of CHR Lift Calculator on all the DrillMAX fleet and the Ringline boost Accumulator for Stena Carron & DrillMAX.

In addition, Stena Drilling have worked with clients to plan the installation of automation upgrades focussed on making improvements on operational critical path timings primarily to our DrillMAX series drill ships. These include the installation of a reflexive drilling system (NOVOS) which automates repetitive drilling activities and Multi-Machine Control (MMC) for automated drill pipe tripping operations on two of the DrillMAX series. In addition, the use of robotics such as NOV’s ATOM RTX on-board these vessels will remove personnel from red zone operations.

Similarly, by working closely with clients Stena Drilling are also finalising the installation of Red-Zone Monitoring systems whilst operational on another two drillships. The installation of this equipment aligns with the HSE focus area minimising the risk of injury to personnel in hazardous areas onboard.

By adopting a process to identify priority performance focus areas, Stena Drilling have identified five focus areas which have allowed for targeted improvement over the past 12 months across the organisation. By working closely with customers and proactively improving operational and safety performance Stena Drilling continue to successfully deliver ‘industry-leading performance’.

“I’m incredibly impressed with how our offshore crews have driven performance on-board our rigs so that we can consistently provide safe and efficient operations for our clients.”

Svein Inge Sangedal [Operations Manager – Stena Drilling]

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