WorldOil

Drilling advances

Most people outside the industry, and some inside the industry, consider a drilling rig to be a just big, noisy machine designed to drill a hole in the ground, while being as annoying as possible. Few people understand that a rig is a complex, coupled, multi-variant system with lots of parts and pieces all skillfully joined to drill a well as efficiently as possible. Drilling rigs employ multiple systems within a rig, including electrical, pneumatic, hydraulic and mechanical systems. Each of these systems is linked to all the others. For example, the pneumatic system uses compressed air to run hoists and tuggers, clutches in the drawworks, the old-style “automatic driller” and the kelly spinner. The loss of rig air, or one device using too much air, can cripple some other portion of the rig that needs compressed air. Here’s another one: try to operate a BOP stack without pressured hydraulic fluid from the closing unit.