October 1998 Vol. 219 No. 10  Drilling

J. John Grow,  Engineering Editor

Training, a stepping stone toward solving drilling challenges

Today, wells are being drilled at greater water depths with deeper and smaller targets. Rig capabilities and available technologies are generally being pushed to their limits. Planning is a critical issue for all wells and special requirements for extended reach or complex 3-D wells create even more need for team effort.

As engineers, challenges of doing what once was considered impossible is a common occurrence. Of course, we understand that the "impossible" is only a wrinkle in technology evolution and that training is the key to innovative thinking and a stepping stone towards solving impossible problems facing our drilling challenges.

Educational training, innovative thinking and an open mind were prerequisite for a five-day course presented by K&M Technology Group in Conroe, Texas, this past August. This column presents an overview and attempts to convey what the instructors consider conventional-thinking from a new perspective.

The training course's purpose was to present current best practices, and available technologies for extended reach drilling (ERD) planning and implementation. The presentation format is for engineers and senior operations personnel who have a degree of competency in drilling engineering and operations practices. Many of the design ideas proposed were not necessarily conventional; however, almost all were based on real experience. Overall, the main theme was to encourage our thinking of ERD and completion operations as a complex system and to use a "systems" approach toward reaching design solutions. It is critical that no one aspect of an extended reach well be treated in isolation; each component is inter-related and the big picture must be maintained.

Participants gathered from all over the world and represented companies such as Anadrill, Andergauge, BPX, Chevron, Dowell, Exxon, Halliburton, Hycalog and Phillips Petroleum. Of most interest was class participation and discussion, which was very informative and encouraged by the instructors. There were no "dumb" questions from these industry leaders and out-of-class training/discussion was available for those interested in pursuing a particular area of interest.

Thanks go out to K&M Technology's Mike Mims, president, and Harry Williams, VP training, who led the presentation, and to Tony Krepp, VP engineering, who was instrumental in putting together the extended reach engineering design and implementation course.

Glomar Explorer drills at world-record water depth in GOM. Despite low oil prices, exploration continues in deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Operator Chevron, teamed with Shell Deepwater, EEX and Enterprise Oil, drilled in 7,718 ft of water at Atwater Valley Block 118, breaking the old record of 7,612 ft, set in 1996 by Transocean's Discoverer 534 under contract to Shell.

World-record water depths Click for enlarged view.

Record drilling depth set for the Gulf of Mexico. Operator EEX's Llano discovery well, located in Garden Banks 386 about 137 mi. off Louisiana, drilled to a record depth for the GOM of 27,864 ft. The well encountered approximately 200 ft of hydrocarbon-bearing sands in Pliocene and Miocene sediments. These zones are equivalent to those found at Shell's prolific Auger field, located about 10 mi south-west of Llano.

The drilling, located in about 2,700 ft of water, initially reached 25,340 ft when operations were suspended due to rig limitations. In April, the larger-capacity Sedco Omega rig resumed drilling to make Llano the deepest well drilled in the Gulf of Mexico and the deepest hydrocarbons discovered to date.

Llano partners include operator EEX of Houston with 30%, Enterprise Oil of London with 30%, and Mobil and PanCanadian with 20% each.

New drill-test research facility. Amoco has a new drill-test research facility in Catoosa, Oklahoma, that will allow oil companies, including some of their competitors, to find better ways to drill for oil. Test Rig 11, unlike its predecessor the Blue Rig, is mounted on a pivoting rail and comes complete with a state-of-the-art data collection lab and two generators, one electric- and one diesel-powered.

The pivoting rail, designed and constructed by Amoco and Tulsa-based Parker Drilling engineers, enables work crews to move the rig to a new well more quickly than previous rigs. The pivoting rail allows skidding over dozens of different wellbore combinations, with the same platform, in a matter of hours, vs. days.

The test facility includes: a hydraulics test loop to study drilling fluid behavior, a test ramp to evaluate coiled tubing systems, and a data collection center that includes the latest computer and drilling-industry software technology.

More than half of all testing at the site is for companies other than Amoco, including Shell, Phillips Petroleum and a number of oil-service companies from across the nation. The test facility also has clients from Japan, Britain and Latin America.

One problem the facility has had to overcome was research confidentiality. At first, Amoco was reluctant to share the facility with outside companies unless information was shared. Now, rigs can be cordoned off, so no outside visitors are allowed near the work site. That way, tests remain confidential, with only the data acquisition coordinator knowing the results.

Copyright © 1999 World Oil
Copyright © 1999 Gulf Publishing Company