“Walking” Drilling Rigs Will Be Developed In Tatarstan
They will have a platform for lateral movement of the mobile unit.
The Design Bureau of the Higher School of Petroleum has developed sliders for drilling rigs. In the new educational and laboratory building in Almetyevsk, 3D models and documentation are created for Tatneft. At the same time, Higher School of Economics students are also involved in the development, writes Neftyanye Vesti.
When moving in the traditional way, a mobile drilling rig needs to be disassembled, the mast must be laid down, all communications must be dismantled, etc. This requires six to seven units of heavy equipment. This work becomes much more difficult during times of mud. The new development will reduce labor costs.
On the instructions of the drillers, with the participation of the Lenmash plant, technical documentation was prepared for the movement systems of a mobile drilling rig – SPBU-170/225. A total of eight such systems have been manufactured since last year.
A jack-up rig is a platform for lateral movement of a mobile drilling rig. Before drilling a cluster of wells, the drilling rig is mounted on a special platform. On it it moves from well to well along five rail guides. It is driven by hydraulic pusher cylinders.
To reduce friction when sliding, the rails are treated with a special lubricant. The guides consist of several sections. As soon as the drilling rig advances a certain distance, the vacated sections are dismantled and assembled along the way. The drilling rig can be moved 20 meters or more along the well pad.
“After the drilling process is completed, the installation is simply moved to the required distance, without dismantling the top drive, “throwing out” 1000 meters of drill pipe string, etc.,” says Ruslan YAKOVLEV, leading design engineer of the VSHN Design Bureau.
The standard duration of movement of a mobile drilling rig inside a bush is 6.9 days. The slider made it possible to reduce the time of movement of installations to 12 hours (Inform-Devon reported about this project here).
The design bureau is exploring the issue of upgrading the system to suit all types of drilling rig sizes. Engineers at the Higher School of Petroleum also have plans to create their own “walking” drilling rig.
