Chesapeake Energy Creates Real-Time Data Applications for Mission-Critical KPIs using Dash Enterprise

Introduction

Chesapeake Energy is an American company that specializes in the exploration, development, and production of natural gas and oil. Dash Enterprise empowered Chesapeake Energy’s teams to build real-time, mobile-friendly, custom visualizations integrated into web applications that gave their remote contractors access to live drilling data, enabling them to respond to critical drilling alerts quickly, on-the-go.

Challenge

There were two main challenges that had to be addressed:

1. Inadequate visuals for live drilling metrics: Chesapeake Energy was paying $150,000 for an application that was charging them on a per rig per day basis. Chesapeake Energy liked the data that the vendor was providing but the vendors visuals used for keeping track of the drilling metrics were not meeting Chesapeake Energy's requirements based on what the field agents needed.
2. Ability to view metrics securely on a mobile device: Purchase and maintenance costs associated with the mobile version of SCADA (Supervisory control and data acquisition) systems was over budget for the Chesapeake Energy team. Desktop SCADA systems slowed the process of accessing crucial drilling metrics as agents lacked computer access in the field, creating a big need to introduce a mobile application.

Solution

Chesapeake Energy's Drilling and SCADA teams sought applications that provided adaptability and portability to align with their objectives. Dash Enterprise equipped them with the functionality and flexibility to create a custom solution with their users in mind.

• Ability to build in-house applications to reduce costs: Chesapeake Energy's Drilling and SCADA teams sought applications that provided adaptability and portability to align with their objectives. Dash Enterprise equipped them with the functionality and flexibility to create a custom solution in-house at a much lower cost than their previous vendor.
• Mobile responsive secure applications: With the help of Dash Enterprise, Chesapeake Energy was able to create mobile-friendly applications integrated with security features that allowed their contractors in the field to access metrics using their mobile devices rather than having to go through a long logging process through their work computers.
• Tailored data presentation: Dash and Plotly enabled Chesapeake Energy’s drilling team to construct data visualizations based on the field agents’ needs.

The visual depiction below, developed by Chesapeake Energy’s team, helps the team identify and avoid any potential tripping issues while drilling a live well, such as a Torque and Drag tracking and understanding the current position of drilling based on friction factor lines.

Results

The Chesapeake team needed more than basic visualizations to meet their goals. Dash Enterprise equipped them with the functionality and flexibility to create a custom solution with users in mind.

• Greater value for money: Dash Enterprise helped Chesapeake Energy replace a previous vendor, who charged approximately $150,000 for supplying real- time drilling data for monitoring of live wells, while providing greater flexibility and compatibility for the Chesapeake team. This software centralization included the ability to seamlessly integrate with Chesapeake’s Snowflake data warehouse and other corporate data repositories.
• Reduced well cost by reducing tripping issues: Applications built in Dash Enterprise for tracking drilling metrics such as creation of doglegs and key seats, hole instability, lost circulation, and excessive bottom hole temperatures, helped prevent drilling setbacks, saving several million dollars per unplanned incident.

• Adoption increased by 100%: Adoption of the drilling applications rose by 100% as the development team built a tailored data representation for field agents. Plotly's customization capabilities allowed for personalized visuals. Four to five years ago, adoption was at just 50%. The agents found the data representations intuitive, improving their ability to respond to alerts. This led to increased adoption of the drilling applications, integrating them seamlessly into the agents' workflow.
• Accelerate time-to-delivery from 16 weeks to 4 weeks: Chesapeake’s team leveraged the guidance of Plotly’s Customer Success team and documentation to accelerate their delivery after their first 2 applications were pushed to production.

• Dashboard Sharing is another capability that they were able to introduce within their applications, which created a URL that a user could use to access a saved state inside their application using the Dash Snapshot Engine. Between the SCADA app and the drilling apps, they have at least 150+ people using the visuals in one way or another for guidance and decision making. Chesapeake Energy’s team also has 6 full applications that are used frequently and three that are 24/7.
• Ability to integrate ROP (Rate of Penetration) Predictor ML Models and Motor Failure Predictor: They are currently looking to build predictive models on identifying different drilling metrics and more based on historical data using Dash Enterprise.