Non- extracted drill bit technology

Repent

I’ve heard in the media that there is a problem with oil drilling operations. When drilling for oil the bit will often break- requiring a new bit to be fitted to the drill shaft. The drilling companies all say there is no way to get around this problem –it is unsolvable. Well I’m in the camp of thinkers like Thomas Edison who said “No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking” & I would like to share some ideas I’ve had on this problem.

One solution might be to have a series of drill bits connected in a drill through scheme. IE- you get a master drill bit, a smaller drill bit fitted above or inside it, and then an even smaller drill bit inside or above that one. Each drill bit made of progressively harder material that can simply drill through the old bit once that bit has failed or broken. This would save the time and money of extracting the drill rigging out of the ground, replacing the bit at the surface then having to reinsert the drill rigging back down to where it was.

Another idea along the same lines is to have explosives built into the drill bit & have a drop in bit slide down the drill shaft after. IE- when the drill bit fails the explosives in the bit can be remotely detonated from the surface & then a replacement drill bit slides down a hollow drill shaft from the surface to continue drilling. The replacement drill bit also having explosives built into it so the process could continue thru multiple drill bits till they reach the targeted depth.

Still further if explosives in the drill head are ruled out or unsafe- the drill head could be made of materials that would vaporize when an electric current is applied to it. IE- a very high voltage cord runs down through the drill shaft to the drill bit & when the bit has lost its utility a sufficiently high voltage is passed down the cord to the bit to vaporize it & then a new drill bit can be dropped down the shaft to replace it.

I hope these ideas help someone somewhere!

smiley · Fission Joined: Apr 16, 2004 Posts: 2105 Location: Europe

Repent · Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2004 5:52 pm Post subject:

Sometimes you have to take one step backwards in order to take two steps forward!

If the method I suggested in this article is defeated because we are currently making use of boroncarbide or cubic boron nitrate drill heads; then part of the solution is not to use these super-hard materials.

As suggested in my original article, you begin drilling through soft earth with a soft drill bit, when that has worn down- a harder drill bit drills through it and down into harder Bedrock. When that drill bit is exhaust a further drill bit made of harder stronger material (like the boron carbide bit mentioned) could be used as the last step of the process.

The addition two soft drill bit steps would cut down or eliminate wear & tear of the super-hard bit needed to reach the targeted depth. And the new process would reduce drilling expense & cut drilling times. If more wells could be drilled quicker & cheaper- more and more marginal supplies of oil could be brought economically to the market.

dmtu · Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2004 11:54 pm Post subject:

Oil rigs use reverse circulation. Dual walled drill steel allows mud (mud stabilizes the earth wall and brings cuttings to the surface) to be sent down the outer wall while cuttings come up the center so the progressively smaller bit idea would be tough and undoubtedly more expensive if not technically completely impossible. The drill bit usually a tri-cone or hammer has to be larger than the steel so at the outset you would need an extremely large hole and an extremely large blowout preventer (prevents the steel from being forced out of the hole by high pressure gas). The anhydrous (?) rock that acts as a cap over good oil deposits is very hard, in my personal experience with limestone a bit can be useless in as few as 6 hours of use with as little as vertical 100 feet. Drills are also limited by drawback strength. While I won't claim to be a pro by any means I have worked on exploratory rigs. Tripping steel back out of the hole is just about the most hated task there is on a rig so I imagine if there was a better way one of those guys would have figured it out. I know I certainly gave it some thought. Toughest work I've ever done and I think I would as soon starve as to do it again.
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