Down the Well
with Visio Technical

 Woodside Petroleum, one of Australia’s most successful petroleum exploration and production companies, has overcome time and safety issues by using technical drawing to visualize restrictions in well bores. These drawings act as visual "road maps" for employees guiding production tools down seven inch (175mm) diameter pipes, known as tubing strings, that can descend for several kilometers into the earth.

A variety of tools are sent down tubing strings to do maintenance and routine work as well as record various kinds of information such as hydrocarbon flow rates. Tools are also used to seal off wells to enable surface work to be conducted safely.

"Tools are often lowered 4000-6000 meters down these well bores on a single strand of wire, said Peter Stone, Well Services Supervisor for Woodside Petroleum. "So there is no room for mistakes."

Woodside previously used stick drawings in ASCII format to visualize different sections of well bores. Unless employees were highly skilled with these drawings, they could lose critical data on depth control and pipe sizes. The drawings always had to be checked extremely carefully before going offshore.

The company now uses Visio Technical with unique drawing shapes and templates originally developed by Baker Oil Tools, a leading supplier of downhole equipment. Since Woodside uses Baker's  tools throughout its projects, it made sense to use the product-oriented templates and stencils with Visio.

"Baker Oil Tools supplied us with the basic shapes needed to accurately represent different sections of our wells," said Stone. "These shapes include tubing, landing nipples and production packers – a tool needed to create a well seal." Woodside has also begun development of custom stencils for various other equipment and unusual projects.

"Visio Technical allows Woodside to accurately display different sections of well bores so that employees can identify restrictions and what is causing them," said Stone. "The product also reduces preparation time of visual representations from two hours to about 15 minutes – a great benefit for a working environment where people are not located in an office."

Woodside Petroleum has also overcome a limited resource issue by being able to import the well drawings into Excel spreadsheets for on-site workers to utilize. In this way, every employee does not need to have the Visio application on their computer.

"Visio allows us to import vital information into Excel spreadsheets  to create the combined schematic and log without losing any of the drawing details," said Stone. "This is just one example of how well Visio integrates into the Microsoft world. Visio Technical was chosen out of eight technical drawing and diagramming programs currently marketed for making downhole drawings. The program’s simplicity and functionality is simply outstanding."

The Visio/Excel combination works particularly well where drawings and log data need to be altered to reflect actual conditions as work progresses. Only so much planning can be done in the office and the ease with which information can be updated helps  with the keeping of accurate records