Wired drill pipe technology: technical and economic overview

Abstract

The author have designed this thesis to give the reader detailed knowledge about wired drill pipe technology (WDP technology). Focusing on providing the reader with unbiased examples and explanations have been of top priority. The optimal result being that the reader will be able to, with only little or none prior knowledge about WDP technology, fully understand the WDP technology’s economics and technical aspects.

Wired drill pipe technology (WDP technology) is becoming more and more known to the oil industry. WDP provides wired communication with downhole tools, instead of conventional wireless communicating-methods like mud pulse telemetry (MPT) and electromagnetic telemetry (EMT). Up to this point, this new and sophisticated technology have been used to drill more than 120 wells worldwide. The technology have been around for some time, but have in later years gained more attention from oil companies, especially the companies regularly drilling highly challenging fields. This thesis gives a close examination of all the technical parts of the technology. Looks closer upon the transmission speed. How the telemetry works and the route between surface equipment and all the way down to the bottom hole assembly (BHA). The thesis also closely examines the economics of the technology and relate this to the cost of drilling operations offshore in the North Sea. New technology provide new possibilities, but they often tend to have a steep price tag. This thesis examines if the additional cost of wired pipe is worth the investment. It also provides calculations from two different example-wells, and the results from these calculations clearly states the cost of WDP. The use of WDP technology provide multiple new options in regards of communication with different sensors. Since there now is a constant dataflow, from the drill floor and down to downhole tools, you have the opportunity to place sensors along the string. These sensors are more commonly known as Along String Measurements or ASMs for short. The ASMs will play an important role within the development of automated drilling rigs. The combination of wired drill pipe network, the ASMs and automated drilling computers are closer examined as well. The WDP technology is not only saving time during the drilling operation, but it also makes the drilling operation safer for the personnel involved. The technology shows strong resilience, but still have a few weak spots that needs further improvement.