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would provide students with an oppor-

Drilling tunity to become familiar with some of the more basic concepts and terminol- ogy. In fact, there is currently a drilling simulator available for the iPad for the very student-friendly price of $15 (see sidebar).

Before the advent of these advanced drilling simulators, formal training programs relied heavily on actual rig time to gauge competency. “Given the nature of an offshore drilling environ- ment, the margin for error is extremely small,” Engum says. “One of the major goals of these simulations is to provide a rigorous training experience which elicits responses similar to those in an actual drilling scenario. This results in higher competence levels when the operators step onto the rig for the frst time.”

Some simulators provide instant reply-style feedback through digital reenactments.

Photo: ARI Simulation

Greg App is an editorial intern at would offer an affordable, accessible degrees in petroleum engineering, and Offshore Engineer. He way for students to become familiar with the vast majority of them will not have holds a BS in Business many aspects of drilling and well com- access to full scale drilling simulators Administration and is pletions,” Grieve says. Indeed, today’s until late in their academic career. Apps currently pursuing a educational market is seeing an explo- may never replace the ultra-realism and BS in Petroleum sion in the amount of students pursuing technicality of most simulators, but they Engineering.

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