Drilling advances

	Vol. 231 No. 8
JIM REDDEN, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Under the radar, but flying high

Legendary physicist and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke opined that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” The Profiles of the Future author could very well have written the mission statement for what may be one of the industry’s most effectual, yet largely unknown, new technology platforms.

In the early 1980s, a group of operators got together in Houston and decided it was high time they organize a medium for introducing new technologies that may be considered too far out of the box for the more conventional forums. What resulted from that collaboration was the Drilling Engineering Association (DEA), and as that organization approaches its 30th birthday, even its principals concede it has flown a bit under the radar.

“A lot of people don’t know much about us,” says Vice Chairman Ben Bloys, whose day job is as Chevron’s team leader for drilling fluids and drilling waste management.

Nevertheless, the half-day quarterly meetings, which are held at various host company facilities throughout the Houston area, attract anywhere from 40 to 50 industry representatives to hear presentations on what Bloys and others say are cutting-edge technologies. The membership spans some 30 US and international operators, both majors and independents. At last count, the DEA also boasted nearly 70 associate members, representing service and supply companies, trade associations such as the International Association of Drilling Contractors, and government agencies, including the US Department of Energy, the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the new US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement. The membership also includes the joint public-private Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America, which recently updated the DEA on its multifaceted ultra-deepwater technology program. What’s more, presenters are not confined to Houston or the US; the last meeting drew promoters of unique technology ideas from Scotland and Germany.

Chairman Morris Keene, former director of drilling engineering for Occidental Oil and Gas Corp. who now heads up an Oxy joint venture, said the DEA mission is simply to move innovative and often unique drilling ideas from the conceptual stage to the commercial. Since its inception, the DEA has completed a host of diverse projects ranging from an examination of environmentally acceptable drilling fluids to eliminating shale hydration and related borehole problems in gumbo, to subsea blowout control to reducing bit balling by electro-osmosis, and everything in between. The DEA also serves as the member liaison with universities and other research organizations.

Keene said the 12-member advisory board, representing a cross-section of the membership, examines project proposals prior to each quarterly meeting to select the ones that will be given a full hearing before the membership.

“Basically, the objective is to develop a joint industry project where all the companies interested in the particular subject can get together and see if they can bring the technology forward a bit faster,” Keene said. “We’re the facilitator [for] the people who have good ideas and need some funding to take a project forward.”

Bloys said it is those “good ideas” that make the DEA unlike any of the more traditional industry forums: “The coolest thing is the stuff we like to show at our forums. They usually are right out there on the edge, and that’s what we like to target. We want to look at stuff that is either brand spanking new or maybe has had one field trial, but it has to be out there and make people think.”

The lineup for the last quarterly meeting in June serves as a case in point. There was Philippe Nobileau of Germany’s Marinovation pitching the CoilFlat CT Liner, described as a continuous pipe-in-pipe casing, transportable on coiled tubing-sized reels to deliver a high-collapse-strength monobore well casing system. Nobileau claimed that the technology provides a casing network that can be designed with unlimited strings and deliver top-to-bottom high-pressure containment.

Dr. Reginald Minton, director of Aberdeen, Scotland-based Mosarric Services Ltd., updated the DEA on its patented Mud Watcher technology, which continuously monitors drilling fluid density and viscosity and delivers early indications that something may be amiss with the mud system. He also discussed plans to extend the technology to add continuous electrical stability readings on oil-based drilling fluids along with a constant measurement of conductivity and pH in their water-based counterparts. He also encouraged DEA members to consider investing in what the company calls its “revolutionary” Rheo-Watcher, which is being engineered to deliver continuous output of the relationship between shear stress and shear rate.

Weatherford’s Bob Pudwill discussed development of the Safety Torque Adapter System, a hydraulic bolt tensioning flange connector that he proclaimed safer and cheaper than traditional hammer wrenches and hydraulic torque measuring tools. Then, there was Chelsi Kaltwasser of FMC, presenting a 13⅝-in. slimhole subsea wellhead system with in-wellhead tubing hanger completion. The system is said to allow for lighter drilling packages on tension-leg platforms and spars, and to permit smaller casing sizes that, in turn, reduce mud costs. Tom Williams of Nautilus International discussed a proposal for low-cost intervention with a self-standing riser that the developers believe has potential to replace floating rigs for deepwater workovers and similar operations.

“We try to look at technologies that may not be fully developed, but [are] far enough along that there’s a good chance it’s going to work,” Bloys said. “What we don’t want is something that’s old hat and that people have seen six or seven times. We have a very interesting group that is very thoughtful about keeping new technologies in front of the organization.”

The next meeting is scheduled for Sept. 30, and the DEA says anyone with a promising technology is welcome to submit a proposal on the organization’s website at dea-global.org.