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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Working with R&D Solutions, Ulterra’s CounterForce® recently set a new South Australian offset record.
Featured in the June issue of Oilfield Technology, Ulterra discusses how customized bit development for RSS reduces tool failure.
Nearly all new technologies struggle in their infancy to gain adoption due to high cost, problematic reliability, lack of understanding, and marginal value proposition. Over years of learning, development and refinement these hurdles reduce, and with each step new opportunities open up. This has been the case for rotary steerable systems (RSS), which is finding new value in this historic downturn.
A major operator in central Australia recently achieved significant time and cost savings thanks to the combination of the Ulterra TorkBuster matched with the U513M CounterForce drill bit. The combination of TorkBuster and CounterForce proved to be a rock destruction solution within the challenging Permian, with the operator increasing ROP by 52% and achieving total savings of $150,000.
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