E&P Notes (July 2015)

Abstract

E&P Notes ’New Perforation Gun Design Tests the Value of Simplicity’ Price competition among makers of perforating guns has gotten brutal, even by the rough standards of unconventional oil business where depressed oil prices have led to deep budget cuts. One sign of the times is the sharp decline in the average amount paid to run a group of perforating guns into a well to blast open the rock for a single fracturing stage. “The rate paid has dropped 60% over the past 18 months,” said James Cole, product line manager at Hunting Titan, one of the largest makers of the downhole systems used to perforate the reservoir before fracturing. “They are not making much profit.” For Hunting, the rate drop adds to the challenge of launching a total redesign of its perforating gun system, which was conceived when the economics of the business looked brighter. The finished gun and detonation unit, called the ControlFire system, is billed by the company as its biggest design change in decades. From the outside, it does not look so different. Some of the biggest changes are that components have been removed. ’Ultrasonic Drilling Mud Measurement To Improve Drilling’ Technology developers are working on a new ultrasonic flowmeter for drilling fluids aimed at obtaining better measurements than current systems with far fewer disruptions to rig systems. The proposed instrument may be wrapped around a rig’s suction line or flowline to provide a second-by-second analysis of flow rate, density, rheology, and particle size distribution. The developers’ goal is to use the data obtained from the wrap-around clamp-on device to quickly address critical drilling issues such as well control, kick detection, stuck pipe, mud pump efficiency, and the evaluation of routine, but difficult to monitor tasks such as hole cleaning efficiency and hydraulics optimization. Jason Norman, a managing partner at Onsite Integrated Services (OIS) and a former senior drilling engineer at Apache and Shell, is leading the team in building the new device. Although drilling mud may only account for about 15% of the cost of a drilling operation, a major improvement is needed in this area because poor mud management can cost much more, he said. “Nearly every nonproductive time event we have on a drilling rig has some link back to drilling fluids,” with the exception of equipment failure, Norman said. “If something is happening with your well while drilling, cementing, or logging, chances are it can be tied back to our drilling fluids in one shape or form,” he said. If the research and development project is successful, the ultrasonic meter will be a superior alternative to the Coriolis meter, which is widely used on onshore and offshore rigs to measure the mass flow of drilling mud. The system is being developed in partnership with a European-based sensor development company, TSK Solutions, and should be ready for field testing by the fourth quarter of this year.