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Gold/Mining/Energy : Strictly: Drilling and oil-field services -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Douglas V. Fant who wrote (17838)	4/3/1998 12:05:00 PM
From: Sunny	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 95453

Doug, Traditional rigs use a rotary table and kelly (6 sided tubular) and can only drill with one joint of pipe at a time. At top drive connects directly to the pipe and allows the rig to drill with 3 joints of pipe at a time (a stand). Each time you make a connection it takes time. Another benefit of the top drive is that you can back ream for a stand to help clean the hole of cuttings. These factors make top drives a value added piece of equipment on some directional and horizontal wells. Daily operating cost drives the economics. So it is easy to see why most offshore rigs have the drives installed. The Austin chalk trend tends to produce more gas than oil as you move east into Louisiana. It also is much deeper and hotter. Because of the fractured nature of the reservoir horizontal wells are the best well configuration to maximize the reservoir potential. Many of these wells are drilled underbalanced and have specialized equipment on the location to handle the gas as they drill. All of this increases the daily cost which makes a top drive more important. Off shore the majority of the drilling rigs now have top drives. These are powered with big DC motors and derrick has to be refitted with the rails the the drive units run on. Varco, National, Maritime hydraulics and other major equipment mfrs are the primary players in this market segment. This is a major operation and the rigs are generally brought into the ship yard. Generally, the land rigs in the US have derrick height limitations that preclude installing the same types of top drives that are installed on offshore rigs. Rigging up and tearing down time are also an issue with land rigs since they move so frequently. Tesco used to exclusively use Hydraulic power for their drives. The power packages are easily transportable ( may even be helicopterred into jungle locations) and easy and quick to rig up. I hope I haven't over answered your question. Sunny