The role of a worldwide drilling organization and the road to the future

After struggling for the past few years with the question "How can we get t he highest return for our drilling expenditures?," major operators have arr ived at very different answers. Some have responded by moving the drilling function to business units, some by retaining a mixture of centralized and decentralized drilling staffs, and some by outsourcing the function almost entirely. The purpose of this paper is to describe why one major operator has chosen to keep drilling management as one of its core competencies, and how it con tinues to use a centralized drilling group to meet its exploration and prod uction customers' needs. Also discussed is the deliberate strategy employed by this operator to meet the challenges posed by the changing exploration and development environment. This strategy included elements to manage peop le, business and technical processes, and to ensure that the drilling organ ization captured and shared its experience. This paper describes this strat egy, the organization's successes and remaining challenges, and how this or ganization plans to address these challenges.