Introduction

The summer internship program at Cairn India Limited was an 8 week integrated learning curve, blending the intricacies of Office work with the technicalities of drilling at rig sites. The internship started with assigning of a major project in Office. I was assigned Optimization of Rig Hydraulics and hole cleaning and its simulation using WellPlan module of LANDMARK software suite. I started my project with building my basics about the topic and reviewing the Hydraulic analysis of different wells to have a clear picture of what I would be doing. I selected Mangala Horizontal producer for my analysis so as to cover all the aspects of hole cleaning and optimization in both vertical and horizontal sections of a well and perform a comparative analysis. The whole office project span continued for around 4 weeks wherein I completed my manual calculations of Hydraulics and hole cleaning (pressure drop calculations, bit hydraulic calculations and vertical well hole cleaning calculations) along with the interpretation of the graphical results generated from the Wellplan Hydraulic module with my mentor. A three week field trip to Barmer asset (Rajasthan) was lined up for the interns and we had to select a topic for our field visit project. I decided to go with Cementation and Pressure testing of Casing. The field experience was something that I never had since my exposure to Petroleum Engineering but the internship at Cairn gave me the the opportunity to see Drilling, Wireline logging and Cementing operations, all at different field sites which was a wonderful experience mentored by the best professionals in the Indian oil field industry as well as expatriates from other countries. I as an intern was grasping all the knowledge that I could get from the work going around at the fields and studied the operations extensively by observation. The last week of the Internship was all about collaborating all the knowledge that I have gained in the previous 7 weeks, discussing the doubts regarding the projects and to deliver all that in a systematic presentation form. My internship at Cairn India during the 2013 summer gave me a huge amount of experience that really has put me streets ahead of where I was when I started. Experience on a CV is immeasurably valuable, and from a company such as Cairn India it is worth even more. I was given complete free rein over a research topic tied into their current operations in Barmer, so I really did feel like one of the team. My internship really has given me an excellent start to my career, and the whole experience has been extremely enjoyable and invaluable.