Routine reports must be made to various organisations on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
1 Daily drilling report
This is the vehicle by which all interested parties are kept informed of the details of the drilling operation.
Outside the Company it is sent to shareholders, partners, and to local bodies such as the Ministry of Energy and/or a National Oil Company. It covers operations during the 24 hours from midnight to midnight, with a comment on operations up to the actual reporting time (normally 06.00 hrs) and a comment on the immediate programme.
This report should be initiated when the rig arrives in the operating area, and be discontinued when it leaves after the operation (or is stacked). It should give the essential details required by technical staff, without repeating everything reported from the rig to the Head Office (which should be based on the contractors report on the IADC form).
2 Weekly operations summary
It should contain a concise summary of the activity during the previous week, including preparation work etc., with salient details only. The title should be "Weekly Operations Summary ww/yy" where ww is the week number and yy the year.
The weekly summary should also contain a breakdown of the total operating cost (not only drilling cost), giving:
- the cost of the operation to date, including accruals,
- the budgetted amount corresponding to the same stage of the operations,
- the latest estimate of the costs to complete the operation, and thus the total cost of the operation,
- the total amount budgetted.
- explanations for any significant differences between budget and cost/estimated cost.
It should also give details of any LTA and/or the number of days since the last LTA.
This report should be initiated on the arrival of the Country Manager in the area and be discontinued after the departure of the last of the operations team member, which will probably be the Supply Superintendent.
3 Monthly progress report
The "Monthly Report" is sent to shareholders and partners as an ongoing record of the progress of the venture. It must contain not only a factual narrative description of all the activities but also the reasons behind the actions, interpretations of results, comments on events, discussion of implications, etc. The technical sections should contain the standard tabulated data. Any items which may be of special interest to technical specialists should be reported, such as the application of new techniques, tests of new equipment, equipment failures, etc.
It is recommended to write the Monthly Reports in such a way that the basic End of Well Report can be produced by compiling them into one document with the minimum amount of editing required.
4 End of well/ End of campaign reports
An end of well report is required for each well to summarise the technical drilling and evaluation data. It should also include costs.
An end of campaign report is required which summarises the whole campaign in one document for future reference. It should comprise three sections:
- The Geological Results. This section is written to provide the information required by Exploration Staff evaluating the prospectivity of the area.
- Technical Well Data. This section is written to provide the information which may be useful to Drilling Engineering Staff planning a well in the same area, or a well with similar features elsewhere.
- Campaign Data. This section is written to provide the information which may be useful to anyone planning an operation under similar conditions. It should also include the costs.
An important feature of all three sections, but especially of the Campaign Data, is that original plans, assumptions, intentions, etc. are documented and compared with what actually happened, with discussions of the reasons for both successes and failures. There should be a list of recommendations resulting from the experience of the campaign.
It is recommended that the end of well and end of campaign reports are not combined as they are written for two different reasons and usually for two different sets of readers. A set of data, without interpretation, may for example be required for information exchanges with competitors, and it is much easier to put the data together in a distinct file from the start rather than incorporating it into an interpretation document and then separating it out again later.