Jointed Pipe Injector Technology, Disruptive Tech
Dave Richard (CEO of ART), and Ronald Townsend (then President of ACT) presented Jointed Pipe Injector Presentation at LAGCOE. The Jointed Pipe Injector is the latest innovation disrupting well completions, well-interventions, workovers, coil frac, geothermal, plug & abandonment, and drilling. This is the disruptive technology that delivers the speed of coil the reach of jointed pipe and the control of AC quality auto drilling.
The jointed pipe injector is the step change the industry needs for offshore and onshore operations to reduce risk and cost. What is this technology and what does it look like? The injector runs jointed pipe or tubing just like coil tubing, never letting go of the string load fully gripping above the coupling below the coupling but not on the coupling.
Each gripper block is split down the middle and can retract into the housing when contacting a diameter larger than the nominal diameter of the tube or pipe. The gripper blocks are mounted onto drive chains just like a coil tubing injector with hydraulic cylinders applying a squeezing force pushing the chains together.
What this means is that we can push-pull and with an option to rotate while continuously moving a string of jointed pipe into or out of the wellbore. When running into the well with pressure, the operator is not on the work floor watching slips and gauge and disengage hundreds or thousands of times per well through pipe light, pipe heavy, or the balance point.
This is important because it offers a whole new way of performing completions workovers well interventions any service work on horizontal or vertical wells with stick pipe. A new generation of performance lowering the risks and costs of operations with fewer rig hands. Our industry is being challenged to find a better way to complete workover and service extended reach horizontal wells efficiently safely and cost-effectively.
Drilling longer and longer horizontals are stretching the abilities of current equipment technologies used for completions. Technology and drilling equipment controls and software allow drilling long resources that can exceed the industry’s ability to cost-effectively efficiently and safely complete. 18,000 foot programs are now 30,000 foot programs. 20 frack plugs are now 125 frack plugs and they want more.
New drilling speed records produce, highly challenging wellbores making completions and service even harder. The average lateral drilled in the Permian in 2015 was 3,000 feet. In 2018, the average was 10,000 feet. In the northeast, some laterals are beyond 20,000 feet. This problem did not exist 10 years ago.
Current work over rigs designed for vertical wells has not fundamentally changed in 50 years. The larger coil units have reached their limits; 18,000 to 22,000 feet depending on the length and deviations of the lateral. Transportation is a risk with size and weight. Helical buckling, structural fatigue failures, and the cost of new reels of coil every few months are expensive.
Rig assist and standalone snubbing units risk losing grip of the pipe. Setting slips hundreds or thousands of times per well causing the string to drop or blow out of the well when running pipe light, pipe heavy, or through the balance point. The high safety risks of snubbing mean highly skilled highly trained and highly paid rig hands working in the line of fire.
Coil and snubbing also have their advantages and operational benefits. Our jointed pipe injector combines these advantages while reducing the risk of each. The jointed pipe injector continuously grips and moves the string, moves the operator, and the hands out of harm’s way operates with fewer people than snubbing, can rotate if required to slide to the end of the wellbore with durable inexpensive pipe and can transport down the road easily and cost-effectively.
Does the JPI improve the operational performance save time and lower costs. We compiled information from well profiles around 10,000 foot vertical and 10,000-foot horizontals. With 60 to 100 frac plugs, time and cost-based information were compiled and compared from a few well-profiles. The results for the coil tubing unit and workover rig were expected.
The coil tubing unit was faster until it had to demobilize and a rig and rig assist snubbing unit had to be deployed to run in the production tubing. Our numbers show that the time savings of 10 percent compared with coil and 30 percent compared with snubbing can be realized with the jointed pipe injector.
Overall the savings are a direct calculation of the time on the well the number of personnel and the cost of that personnel. A major cost of the coil tubing unit is the coil itself up to four hundred thousand dollars every couple of months. The major cost of snubbing is the high number and high salaries of personnel and the slower speed of the snubbing operation.
By moving the string continuously bringing the guys down from the workbasket introducing the level of mechanization to keep the guys out of harm’s way and automate for control and safety then not only is the speed of operation significantly improved but the size of the crew reduces by 40%. And the labor rate reduces by an estimated additional 20% packaged with the right combinations of existing oil field technologies a reduction in cost by 20%, 30%, or even 40% is possible for completions well interventions and workovers into extended reach horizontal wells drilling plugs milling and cleaning out to 35,000 feet and beyond.
The jointed pipe injector packaging is scalable from 50,000 pounds push-pull to 400,000 pounds to push-pull controlling speed and force of the jointed string into an out of wellbores. The patent-pending retractable gripper block is the technology that makes this work.
The operator is given a full view of the pressures and operation while running through the BOPs equalization spool the injector and the tongue assembly controlling the whole process combined with full AC quality auto drilling capabilities, the operator manages ROP weight on bit delta p and rotary torque and speed today, we customize and run these smart control systems data acquisition and analytics packages within our operator interface panels.
On AC drilling rigs hydraulic drilling rigs and on conventional coil tubing injectors. Real-time graphics of well-control while snubbing into or out of a pressurized well-bore tells the operator exactly what is happening inside the operation opening and closing of the stripping Rams were the annular equalizing of pressures between rams and the interlocks that control the snubbing operation keep the rig hands and equipment safe the operator and the rig hands working from a safe distance out of harm’s way remotely controlling these operations and forces at all times.
Real-time data acquisition and performance metrics are integral to the system and these screens can be seen at the operator screen managers shack or back at the office. To achieve the full advantage that the jointed pipe injector technology has to offer including speed reach lowering of risks and costs then packaging with the existing technologies and customized to your rigs and operations is the right solution in combination with our wrench automated pipe handling control system and conveyor style power catwalk. The complete system can control a jointed pipe or tubing string from one foot to four thousand feet per hour.
The jointed pipe injector is the disruptive technology that delivers the speed of the coil, the reach of jointed pipe, and the control of high spec drilling.