CounterForce

Recently, an operator in Lea County, New Mexico was targeting the Leonard formation, a sub-unit of the Bone Spring formation located within the Delaware Basin with a goal of drilling their longest 8.5” lateral while saving time downhole. Typically, drilling a well of this length in this formation could take over 4 weeks to drill, with challenges faced especially in the lateral section demanding multiple bits to be employed to reach total depth.

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Ulterra has been afforded the opportunity to supply drill bits for the 12.25” section for a customer drilling in the Greater Permian Basin. The Ulterra team has commonly proposed their SplitBlade™ technology for this application, and it has proven to be an effective solution for this customer. Since running Ulterra, performance for this operator has been significantly boosted – saving time and money downhole.
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What is Weight on Bit or WOB?

An essential part of the drilling process is adding force to the drill bit in order to successfully break the rock. Weight on the Bit, or WOB, is the amount of downward force exerted on the drill bit provided by thick-walled tubular pieces in the drilling assembly that are known as drill collars. The downward force of gravity on these steel tubes provide force for the drill bit in order to effectively break the rock.

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Featured in the June issue of Hart’s E&P, Ulterra discusses how new bit designs are pushing drilling boundaries. Over the past year, Ulterra has looked critically at bit design, blade geometry, cutter reinforcement and hydraulics and has been testing new materials, which has resulted in its XP™ line of polycrystalline diamond compact (PDC) bits. With the increased energy going through the bit, it is Ulterra’s goal to make sure the bits do not become the limiting factor in performance.

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Ulterra was recently featured in Drilling Contractor Magazine’s March/April issue, discussing how our CounterForce® technology has been put to the test drilling in deepwater with rotary steerable systems.

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Operators in the Northeast US have been drilling wells with increasingly complex well plans. Due to this, they have been looking more to rotary steerable systems (RSS) to reduce slide time in the lateral and increase directional flexibility and responsiveness. As a result of the down market, RSS have become a more affordable and viable option and Southwestern Energy is certainly not an outlier in this trend with their operations in West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

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Featured in the October issue of World Oil magazine, Ulterra discusses PDC bits for RSS applications.

To extract the full potential of different RSS types, operators have sought out drill bit manufacturers, to provide designs tailored to specific parameters and BHAs. Ulterra has utilized its proprietary technology to develop CounterForce™ PDC bits, designed specifically to reduce lateral vibrations, a leading cause of downhole tool failure.

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Ulterra Drilling Technologies continues to expand the application for its groundbreaking CounterForce® cutting structure technology.  CounterForce uses the cutting structure to reduce vibrations at the bit, which increases efficiency and reduces bit damage.  Reducing vibration is particularly important on wells which utilize Rotary Steerable Systems (RSS), which are becoming more popular as well planners are pushing the limits on directional difficulty and lateral lengths. 

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Working with R&D Solutions, Ulterra’s CounterForce® recently set a new South Australian offset record.

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Featured in the June issue of Oilfield Technology, Ulterra discusses how customized bit development for RSS reduces tool failure.

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