The crushing factor is the weight of the casing string in relation to the yield strength of the pipe. It suggests that you need more area of impact from the dies when the string gets heavier. This should be calculated by the drilling planner and it determines the type of pipe to be used.

What do you do when you run into a casing connection that is impossible to break out? Do you send a man into the red zone with a reciprocator saw while the string is in the elevator? Or are you willing to spend some time rigging up a belt tong to assist where your roughneck or casing tongs were not able to deliver the required torque? Hopefully not. We have safer and more efficient ways of ...

I care about the string. At least, I did when was in charge of it. The solid grip of the elevator around the box felt comforting. No one could ever convince me that hundreds of tons of casing jangling from the top drive, with an inside grip, were a safe option. I was saved by the bell. The new technology (well, new at that point) came along when I had moved up the ranks to my ultimate level of ...

The experienced oil worker will find this rather obvious, but it is never an option to cut corners when it's talk about protecting the casing tubular. Still, we see that routines are not followed or someone takes too many personal liberties. A quick brush-up of dos and don'ts, including a time-saving tip, will not harm anyone.

If you were guaranteed to save 30 hours rig time by investing NOK 250.000 extra - would you do it? Well, someone did and they saved close to NOK 3 million. And got ahead of plan already after drilling the top hole.

Most clients send their equipment on shore to get it inspected and maintained. Is this because of old habits, the nature of the business, or are there situations where it is beneficial to send certified inspectors to the rig?

The risk of stopping casing jobs before reaching TD is greater for deep and/or deviated sections. The ability to ream casing down by using the CRTi (or CRTe)and a ream shoe overcomes challenging wellbore obstructions such as tight spots, ledges, high dog legs, cutting ‘beds’ or difficult deviated zones. There are situations where Level 1 casing reaming could save up to 50 percent of the time or ...

OWS has developed a range of tools that allow multiple opening & closing of ports to allow on demand communication to the annulus and to allow rotation of the upper string when carrying out wellbore fluid displacements. The Weight Set Circulating Tool and the Weight Set Swivel Tool have been successfully applied on two different projects, and in this article, I will share some of the ...

This is probably the most important part of a casing crew’s job; identifying the pipe and ensuring all equipment and tools are within the specs to handle and make up the connections. Why is this so important? The crew needs to understand what type of connections they are making up. Are they all the same, or are there different types in one string? This is crucial as torque figures might differ, ...

In a previous blog we have described the significant potential efficiency gain that lies in a fully automated drilling process, by use of intelligent robots at the drill floor. Before we go into details about how such a system could look, and how we can get there, let’s take a look at where we are on automation on our modern 6th generation rigs today.