URTeC ’15: Weatherford launches Revolution rotary-steerable system
SAN ANTONIO, Texas -- Weatherford International announced the commercial release of its Revolution rotary-steerable system (RSS) at the Unconventional Resources Technology Conference (URTeC) on Tuesday.
The ability to minimize risks and reduce time while drilling is integral for operators seeking to arrive at the production stage quickly and avoid future intervention. The new generation suite of Revolution RSS provides capabilities for diverse directional drilling applications in complex wellbores. Its point-the-bit technology delivers clean, accurately placed and completion-ready wellbores. With advanced sensors and telemetry, the system gives operators a reliable method for drilling from vertical to horizontal in a single run.
"As the ratio of directionally drilled wells to vertically placed wells increases, access to harder to reach reserves calls for an enhanced rate of penetration and improved borehole quality. Revolution RSS allows single-run drilling of curve and lateral sections, as well as high-pressure, high temperature (HPHT) and high-dogleg applications. This enables operators to make better petrophysical measurements while maximizing borehole exposure to the reservoir delivering superior productivity indexes. In the last year and a half, Revolution RSS has drilled 284 vertical-curve-lateral wells in a single run, totaling 2.4 million ft," said Etienne Roux, V.P. of Drilling Services at Weatherford.
Weatherford was one of the first service providers to offer a rotary-steerable system for HPHT environments. The system allows operators to drill in HPHT zones with temperatures exceeding 300°F, allowing operators to produce wells in the increasingly challenging environments with precise drilling control in long laterals, high-angle curves and parallel vertical sections in a single run. The point-the-bit design and real-time geological control of the Revolution RSS enable operators to drill in a variety of wellbore environments, including unconventional fields, HPHT environments, deepwater fields, damaged and underbalanced formation and brown fields.
The Revolution RSS has completed several successful drilling projects for major operators in the Eagle Ford shale.
Recently, in an onshore horizontal well, Revolution RSS was used to drill a well through a challenging, dense limestone and sandstone formation to a total depth of 16,559 ft and high temperatures up to 328°F. The average rate of penetration was 75% faster than conventional steerable motor assemblies. On a separate project with six wells in the Eagle Ford, Revolution RSS achieved an average of 180 ft/hr on all six wells and a record of 227 ft/hr on one well, reducing the drilling cycle by two weeks and saving the operator more than $1 million in operational costs.
