When I went to see the movie “Deepwater Horizon” with some of my graduate students last week, I did not expect accuracy. Drilling for oil and gas is not typically viewed favorably or depicted correctly in Hollywood movies. When I tell non-oilfield people that I am a professor of petroleum… read more 

Scholars from UT Austin, the RAPID group, spent two weeks at IRIS, Norway, as part of the project NorTex Data Science Cluster, funded by the Research Council of Norway. The two researchers, Adrian Ambrus (right) and Roman Shor (left) from the RAPID team were sent to IRIS as a part… read more 

The Journal for Petroleum Technology, featured RAPID in July, 2015 with “The Dawn of a New Automation Consortium.” (SPE subscription or download a pdf copy here). From the article: Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) have set an audacious goal to halve the time, cost, and number… read more 

Drs. van Oort and Ashok presented recent efforts in drilling automation in an SPE webinar earlier this semester. From their website: “In an innovative move, The University of Texas under the guidance of Professor Eric van Oort has opened laboratories targeting drilling automation. The drilling automation laboratory features a drill… read more 

In December, UT students submitted a rig design for SPE DSATS drilling competition which will occur in the late spring of 2015. The design was accepted for the competition. Sorry for the blurry picture or our rig. We will certainly sharpen it up before the competition and repost it here.… read more