Digital Drilling Rig Deployed at Oil and Gas Field in Yamal
An oil and gas field in Russia’s Yamal region has introduced a digital drilling rig designed to automate drilling operations and improve safety and efficiency.
Two Years to Deliver Results
The digital drilling system was developed by the Tyumen-based company Kenera. The product has undergone field testing at a Yamal oil and gas field, confirming its readiness for industrial use.
The project involved 10 specialists from Kenera’s in-house software division, Kenera-Soft. Development and implementation took two years to complete.
The digital drilling rig automates core drilling processes, improving operational efficiency and safety. The project is set to evolve further, with robotic drilling operations scheduled for rollout in 2026.
The initiative proved sufficiently successful that company management decided to expand the software division’s workforce to 50 employees. This team will include not only software developers but also engineers tasked with supporting the system directly at production sites. The project is overseen by the regional department for investment policy and state support for entrepreneurship.
What Is a Digital Drilling Rig?
Despite the term’s growing use, “digital drilling” remains poorly understood by many market participants. In broad terms, it refers to an integrated platform that uses digital tools to manage all aspects of the drilling process. Real-time data collection, analysis, and visualisation enable predictive diagnostics and optimisation across operations.
At present, the system’s functionality allows automation of a wide range of drilling tasks. These include ramping drilling pumps to target flow rates, acquiring downhole telemetry data, recording idle parameters and their dynamics, rotary drilling, directional drilling within a defined sector, and shutting down drilling pumps.
The platform enables all participants in the drilling process to work within a single digital environment. This improves control over operating parameters, reduces risks, increases process accuracy, and ultimately raises overall efficiency and work quality.
The digital drilling rig is significant as a technological breakthrough in its own right. However, oil and gas companies are primarily driven by economic outcomes. Deployment of digital drilling systems increases efficiency, reduces operating costs, and minimises accident risks. Automated systems optimise equipment operating modes, cut downtime, and improve execution quality. This, in turn, lowers maintenance and repair costs, boosts labour productivity, and enhances the quality of the final output. Digital technologies also make it possible to manage drilling operations remotely from anywhere in the world, a capability that is especially important for hard-to-reach fields.
Digital Drilling in the Russian Latitudes
In Russia, development of digital drilling systems is being pursued both by oilfield service companies and by independent IT developers. Implementation approaches include integration with existing industrial control systems, creation of specialised cloud platforms for processing large volumes of data, and the use of machine-learning algorithms to predict well behaviour.
Market participants increasingly believe that the gap with Western competitors has been significantly narrowed, if not fully closed. Rustem Mukhametzyanov, chief executive of Digital Drilling LLC, notes: “The functionality of foreign digital drilling solutions is broadly comparable, although they have been more active in applying machine learning and real-time data analytics with artificial intelligence. In Russia, these technologies are now being actively deployed and have reached the stage of widespread use. It is already clear that digitalisation has moved beyond a conceptual phase and is becoming a practical, working tool, particularly within large oil and gas corporations. As technologies mature and competition increases, solution costs will decline, making them accessible to smaller companies as well.”
The prevailing view is that digital drilling in Russia is currently at the pilot project stage. Rosneft, under its Digital Field programme, uses digital twins, IoT, and big data to monitor and manage drilling operations. Gazprom Neft has developed the Digital Core platform, which analyses rock properties using digital models. Lukoil is implementing drilling automation systems, including robotic rigs and AI-based process control. Tatneft applies IoT and AI technologies to create intelligent wells that adapt autonomously to changing conditions, increasing production by 5–7% while reducing energy consumption.
In this context, the emergence of Kenera’s digital drilling rig represents another step toward the broader goal of digital transformation in Russian oil and gas drilling.
