Drilling advances

	Vol. 228 No. 11
LES SKINNER, PE, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, LSKINNER@SBCGLOBAL.NET

Adaptation. Recently, while watching a documentary on agriculture, I was struck by the similarities between farming equipment used in the mid- to late-19th century and early drilling equipment. In the film, an old thresher powered by a steam engine was separating grain from husk. The engine was connected by a wide fabric band to a large wooden wheel with a crank arm that converted rotary motion into a linear rocking arm. I remembered seeing a similar machine somewhere in an old photograph. Sure enough, a quick check of an old water-well, cable-tool rig, similar to the ones my grandfather used in the early 1900s, confirmed that the power-conversion system was almost identical to that of the thresher.

I then went back to a photo album, which I had assembled during high school, of antique pumping equipment in the Texas Panhandle. Again, an ancient steam engine was connected to a large wooden band wheel by a fabric belt. The band wheel had a crank that was connected by a stiff arm to a horizontal wooden beam that pivoted at its center. The other end of this “walking beam” connected to wooden sucker rods in the well. As the band wheel turned, the walking beam rocked up and down, providing reciprocating vertical motion to pump the shallow oil well. This system was, of course, the basis for the design of later steel pumping units (nodding donkeys) seen in oilfields around the world.

Clearly, this was an adaptation of another industry’s technology to oilfield operations.

Thinking of pumping, I began to look into the history of rod-pumping systems. Sure enough, wooden sucker rods and downhole pumps with traveling valves came directly from windmills. The Dutch deserve credit for this invention; their windmills have been pumping water for centuries. The same technology was adapted by ranchers in the US, Australia, Spain and other areas. Then, the oil business picked it up, adapted it and modified it for more rigorous service.

Rig automation is another adaptation area. Manufacturing industries in Japan began developing automation in the mid-1950s, particularly in steel and automobile manufacturing. Early efforts were rudimentary, but with the advent of computer chips and robotics, automation became routine. Now, we have iron roughnecks, pipe-racking systems and even automated choke manifolds for dynamic underbalanced drilling. Again, the oil industry adapted technology from another industry for its purposes.

I saw a video clip earlier in the week about the efforts to rebuild the Noble Clyde Boudreax, a dual-function drilling rig that recently began working for Shell at Perdido Field in the GOM. This vessel is a state-of-the-art semisubmersible with many improvements, all aimed at maximizing performance while minimizing HSE risks. Of particular interest were the driller’s stations (two derricks, two stations). The driller sits in an ergonomically designed chair with a joystick on either armrest. He literally controls all drilling functions from a single station. Around him, and below his line of sight, is an array of indicators. In the center is the ubiquitous weight indicator. To his right and left are computer screens with various displays in a variety of colors and sizes. Alarms pop up in red print and some flash, if urgent. I’ll bet my grandfather would love to have seen it!

The drillers on this rig sit in an enclosed room with glass panels all around. The room is both a safe haven and a comfortable place to work with little of the stress involved in open-floor operations. Nice.

This setup reminded me of an F-14 jet fighter cockpit I had seen while in college and working at an Air Force base near Lubbock, Texas. The center joystick with multiple switches and control buttons, the displays, the avionics and the controlled environment all looked similar.

What the F-14 had that the rig did not have was a heads-up display on the cockpit windscreen. The pilot never had to drop his eyes to see critical displays and warnings. They were projected onto the inside of the windscreen, but the pilot could look through them to see what was going on outside the cockpit. I understand that it takes some time to master the skill of looking at the heads-up display and alternately looking through it, but pilots tell me it is a great way to get a large amount of information without losing sight of critical operations.

So, why not have a heads-up display on the front window of the driller’s station, or on any other control room observation window?

What else is out there that we can use? Tremendous advances have been made in operating systems and processes in other industries, but uptake seems to be rather slow in our industry. When I started out 35 years ago as a junior engineer for a major oil company, we had a group that did nothing but scan technologies used by other industries to see what we could adapt. Some of those technologies were simply too specialized to use in the oil field. Others were directly adaptable.

For example, look at computer development in the space programs of various nations. The entire computer industry is based on the invention of the transistor, a critical technology that was required for space travel. Vacuum tube systems were simply too heavy to rocket into space.

I looked up the term “adaptation” recently on the web and found descriptions of two adaptation types: 1) structural adaptations are an organism’s special body parts that help it to survive in its natural habitat and 2) behavioral adaptations are special ways a particular organism acts to survive in its natural habitat.

These are approaches the oil industry needs to consider, if we are to survive in our natural habitat.

Perhaps we can adapt the media’s penchant for quoting statistics. We might consider coming up with some indicator that tracks oil industry image improvement. Then, we can quote it often-and loudly-so that the public can grasp that we are actually doing the yeoman’s job of developing abundant energy supplies, which make continued economic development possible.

Here’s an example. A recent study found that the average golfer walks about 900 miles per year. Another study found that golfers drink, on average, 22 gallons of beer each year. That means that the average golfer gets about 41 miles per gallon. That should make golfers right proud of themselves.