US Oil Industry Begins to Embrace AI in Effort Cut Costs, Drill Faster - Bloomberg

Chris Wagner, a wellbore placement specialist, works remotely to support the automation of drilling operations in North Dakota from the Nabors Industries control room in Houston.

From a dark Houston control room, Rafael Guedes watched on a monitor as a robot took charge of a drilling rig in a North Dakota oil field, locking out the human operator.

Glowing red boxes lit up the screen as an artificial intelligence program took over the distant Nabors Industries Ltd. rig, beaming instructions by satellite and making split-second decisions to drill through the rock as smoothly as possible. Guedes, the company’s director of performance tools, estimates the program from Corva LLC will save the human operator about 5,000 commands while drilling the well and increase the speed by at least 30%.