Acknowledgements

This book exists because daily drilling reports capture far more than operational summaries. Behind short entries such as “POOH to change BHA due to erratic torque” sit decisions, experience and operational context that are obvious to the engineers involved in the operation but often invisible to everyone else.

Thanks are due to the open-source communities behind the tools this book relies on throughout: Python, Quarto, Jupyter, and the broader Python data and NLP ecosystem. None of the engineering in this book would be reproducible without them.

Finally, thanks to every reader working through this material on a real archive of real reports. If you find an error, an oilfield abbreviation that’s wrong for your basin, or a chapter that assumes something it shouldn’t, please open an issue in the companion repository — corrections from practitioners are what keep a book like this honest.

The ideas, engineering examples, educational approach and technical validation presented in this book are the author’s. AI tools, including Claude, were used throughout the project to assist with code generation, editing, documentation and iterative review. All engineering decisions, implementation choices and final content remain the responsibility of the author.