Stuck Pipe as a Socio-Technical Failure: Integrating Human Factors into Drilling Risk Management

Résumé fourni par la source

Abstract Stuck pipe remains one of the most persistent contributors to drilling non-productive time (NPT) worldwide, accounting for 10–25% of drilling-related NPT across multiple basins. Traditional mitigation approaches emphasize mechanical, hydraulic, and geological drivers such as differential sticking, hole cleaning, wellbore instability, and torque-drag behavior. However, despite technological advances in real-time monitoring, predictive modeling, and drilling automation, stuck pipe incidence has not declined proportionally. This study proposes that stuck pipe events are fundamentally socio-technical failures emerging from the interaction between subsurface uncertainty, operational complexity, organizational pressure, and human cognitive bias. Using an anonymized multi-well dataset (n = 48 wells; land, swamp, offshore), the paper performs statistical regression analysis to quantify the relationship between intervention delay and NPT severity. Results indicate that decision latency explains 61% of NPT escalation variance (R2 = 0.61), exceeding individual mechanical predictors. Monte Carlo simulation demonstrates that reducing intervention delay by 30% lowers expected stuck pipe NPT by 24–38% under realistic uncertainty bounds. The study integrates Human Reliability Theory, Swiss Cheese Model (Reason), Safety-II principles (Hollnagel), and Just Culture frameworks (Dekker) into drilling risk management. An Integrated Socio-Technical Stuck Pipe Mitigation Model (IST-SPM) is proposed, embedding behavioral decision gates and psychological safety structures into drilling workflows. The findings suggest that future NPT reduction requires equal emphasis on human governance and engineering controls. A case study demonstrates how the calibration ladder improves robustness of PPFG predictions under missing log conditions, reduces redesign loops during well planning, and provides clearer decision communication between subsurface and drilling teams. The paper concludes with minimum data requirements, a repeatable checklist for building log-scarce MEMs, and recommended reporting outputs for drilling-ready PPFG deliverables.

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.