Articles

Reliability + performance = peace of mind

Drilling is the first step in your process, but what happens when your drilling schedule is thrown off as a result of unreliable downhole motor technology? The non-productive time can last a few hours at best, a few weeks at worst, costing your organization hundreds of thousands of dollars. In addition, when your drilling schedule is off track, your entire operation gets derailed, taking longer for you to achieve a return on investment. 

In order to ensure your directional drilling operations go as planned — or even exceed expectations — it’s important to use the right mud motor technology. While there are plenty of options available on the market, many of them are not engineered for reliability or performance. However, with the high costs of NPT and the negative implications towards well profitability, operators can’t afford not to go with highly engineered mud motor equipment for directional drilling. 

ProDirectional is a leader in directional drilling mud motor design and development, utilizing dominant power sections together with rugged lower-end design — maintained and repaired according to stringent quality standards. This leads to lower non-productive time, higher drilling performance, and faster achievement of ROI.

The difference application engineering makes in mud motor design

At ProDirectional, we take great pride in making our equipment the best it can be. Sometimes, this involves designing and engineering each drilling mud motor component from scratch, while other times it involves sourcing the best components available on the market and combining them with our own proprietary technology.

When it comes to our downhole drilling motors, this is the approach we have taken. We source the industry’s most powerful and trusted power sections — the sheer force is industry leading. However, if you combine this amount of power with an “off-the-shelf” driveline, the results will not produce ideal outcomes, with high potential for reliability issues or even mechanical failures that leave parts of the motor downhole.

Industry-leading mud motor design

We combine these industry-leading power sections with our proprietary transmission and lower-end mud motor design that has been developed by our engineering team. Reliability is a core focus of everything we do, which is why we have spent countless hours on the development of our downhole motor technology. Drilling rigs, motor power sections, and drill bits continue to get stronger. So, the design of the downhole mud motor transmission and lower end needs to be able to harness all of this power and energy without components breaking down when in use. 

We understand that if a mud motor comes apart downhole, our clients endure unplanned expenditures from NPT, in some cases upwards of a quarter of a million dollars, leaving them further from their goal. That’s simply not something we’re going to let happen. We know what reliability is worth.

Our proprietary and highly engineered downhole drilling motor designs are capable of delivering upwards of 40,000 pounds of torque, while often subjected to 100 times the force of gravity (100 g), in temperatures up to 380 degrees Fahrenheit. The amount of engineering that goes into this quality of steerable motor technology is unmatched, and something we have taken great care to develop for our customers.

Cradle-to-grave lifecycle management

While many service providers outsource their repair and maintenance procedures, it is a critical part of our mud motor program at ProDirectional. Here’s what our cradle-to-grave lifecycle management looks like:

• We own all of our downole motor assets
• We engineer them in house
• We guide operators how to use our equipment in the field
• We maintain and repair each component

This kind of full-circle lifecycle management of our steerable motor technology leads to incredible performance results for our customers.

Instead of hourly based maintenance like the rest of the industry, where downhole mud motor components are maintained based on the amount of hours they are used, we take a condition-based maintenance approach. Why? Because one hundred hours of use in the Permian isn’t the same as one hundred hours of use in the Haynesville area. In order to properly maintain and repair our mud motor technology, it’s imperative that we consider how it has been used in the field and under what conditions.

Digital mud motor technology logs

To take our quality control standards one step further, we also electronically log every usage, maintenance, and repair for each drilling motor component in our proprietary digital assessment management technology platform, which helps us determine when a component needs to be retired or further repaired.

With an application engineering team in house, our engineers consider any issues our mud motor technology sees in the field and how those issues can be prevented in the future. They re-design and re-work components as needed to ensure the best possible performance, which means we are continuously evolving and improving our technology.

Through these stringent quality control measures, we offer the highest level of reliability for our mud motors, coupled with the highest level of performance.

What are reliability and performance worth to you?

What does your organization look for when evaluating mud motor oil and gas equipment for directional or downhole drilling? It’s likely reliability and performance are your top two criteria. In order to get the level of reliability and performance you’re aiming for, it’s important to look for technology that is properly engineered. Without that, you simply won’t get a level of reliability of performance you can trust — leading to costly non-productive time.

Get in touch with ProDirectional today to learn more about industry-leading downhole motor technology and how it can support your operations, ensuring drilling goes according to schedule so you can reach a faster return on investment.

MWD equipment is not the same as MWD technology

There are many service providers that offer Measurement While Drilling (MWD) tools and services. However, it’s important for operators to remember that not all service providers are the same. Some service providers purchase MWD technology from third-party suppliers while others simply rent from third-party providers who own, maintain and repair the MWD equipment. In both of those cases, there is a major potential for equipment issues to occur while drilling. Why? Because when third parties are involved, the equipment providers are one step removed from the drilling job and typically don’t fully understand the nature of the drilling operations.

At ProDirectional, we not only design and develop our own directional drilling technology and downhole drilling tools — we maintain and repair them to the highest standards as well. This allows us to clearly differentiate our technology from off-the-shelf MWD equipment.

What’s the difference between the two?

It all comes down to the expertise behind the tools. We’re a fully integrated organization, which means that we not only develop and design our own MWD technology, but we also utilize it in the field, and repair and maintain it after use. We are involved in every single touchpoint of our MWD technology — we know where it’s from, where it’s been, and where it’s going. This is what enables us to ensure our MWD systems are superior to others available on the market today.

We ensure drilling performance optimization by designing our own MWD tools

ProDirectional has a team of engineers in house who are tasked with designing and developing our MWD technology. They use the expertise gained from our field personnel — especially when it comes to the types of failures they see happening most often — and use this information in their work. All of our MWD technology is built to mitigate the types of failures that are responsible for unplanned trips. We understand how much non-productive time (NPT) costs our clients, which is why our MWD tools are built for reliability and drilling efficiency. 

Sprint MWD technology

Take our Sprint MWD technology for instance, which takes fast data transmission to a whole new level. It provides operators with real-time drilling data so that they can ensure wellbore placement accuracy. The speed of data transmission from the Sprint MWD means that operators can pump up surveys in under 28 seconds, significantly reducing flat time. Plus, we’ve significantly reduced the possibility for human error with a surface system that is easy to use and intuitive to learn. With the Spring MWD, we have even developed custom decoding filters in real-time while on a job to reduce decoding issues for our clients on the spot.

Octane and OctaneXT

Another example of our MWD tools that result in drilling performance optimization is the Octane and OctaneXT series. Designed to withstand the most hostile environments, the Octane and OctaneXT technologies offer reliability in harsh temperatures, enabling our clients to get high performance results in their drilling operations without worrying about tripping or NPT.

Preventing failures 

When any of our MWD technologies experience issues in the field, we don’t just replace the equipment. Of course during the job we ensure our clients deal with the least amount of non-productive time possible. However, when those tools get back to our lab, our engineers spend time analyzing the failure in detail to learn its root causes. Then, they work on developing fixes so that the same failure doesn’t happen again. MWD companies that don’t design and develop their own technology do not have the ability to apply any innovation or expertise to the equipment. Instead, they are bound to experience the same types of MWD equipment failures in the field over and over again.

Maintaining and repairing MWD technology can’t be left up to a third party

Do you know what happens to MWD equipment after it is used in the field? It all depends on the service provider. Many service providers send their MWD equipment to a third party, or its manufacturer, to repair and maintain. In this case, the third party service provider has limited information on how the equipment was used, whether there were any failures or issues, or anything else about the application of the equipment. As a result, they cannot really offer exceptional MWD reliability and accuracy because they do not have the full picture. 

In other cases, the MWD oilfield technology is maintained and repaired in-house by the service provider. However, often, there is poor record-keeping, so the organization isn’t always aware of the full history of the lifecycle of the equipment. They may not even know when it was last used or repaired and whether it is ready to retire. In many cases, repair and maintenance is an afterthought, so the equipment is not properly taken care of — resulting in issues and non-productive time during the job.

MWD equipment reliability 

We do things differently at ProDirectional. One of the ways we differentiate between MWD equipment and MWD technology is in the way we take care of the tools. For us, repair and maintenance are not an afterthought — they are an entire department. Our quality control standards are the most stringent in the industry. This is because we know our clients value reliability in the field, and we never want our MWD tools to be the reason for failures.

Our quality control process starts with inspecting every MWD part and component and understanding how it has been used in the field. Understanding the history of the equipment is essential to properly maintaining it. We repair the MWD oilfield tools to a like-new condition, while screening for potential concerns. If any issues arise, we re-work the components. After repairs are completed, we conduct pre-deployment testing to ensure all MWD components are field ready by putting them through rigorous proprietary evaluation procedures.

Not only that, but we also use a comprehensive lifecycle tracking software, ProTrax, to account for all of the assembly hours and usage, so we know when a component can be returned to the field or when it is ready to retire. This is a tracking process not used elsewhere in the industry.

Go above and beyond MWD equipment

ProDirectional offers MWD services in the Permian, Eagle Ford, Haynesville, the Rockies, Oklahoma, and the Northeast areas. No matter where our clients need to drill and regardless of the type of weather or geographic conditions, our MWD technology is highly reliable because we have a hand in it from the very beginning. From designing and developing it to utilizing it in the field to maintaining and repairing it, we are involved in every aspect of usage for our MWD technologies so we can ensure the best possible performance for our clients.

Get in touch with ProDirectional today to discuss your next project and find out how we can support you with highly reliable MWD technology and MWD equipment.

Tailoring Equipment and Expertise for Unmatched Performance in the Permian’s Diverse Terrain

It’s common in the oil and gas industry to forcefit technology regardless of the application, especially when it comes to directional drilling. However, that’s not how we do things at ProDirectional. Having over a decade of experience drilling in the Permian Basin, we understand the importance of customizing equipment in order to meet specific application requirements. This not only results in better performance for our clients, but also keeps our equipment in better condition and running more reliably. 

From the Midland Basin to the Delaware Basin, there are a variety of drilling targets and reservoirs which need to be drilled differently because they behave differently. Each application creates unique challenges in terms of vibration, build tendencies, drillability, and formation stability. If we were to use the exact same equipment in the Permian that we do in other basins in the US, we wouldn’t be able to get the kind of results our clients expect from us.

At ProDirectional, we use our leading-edge technology and fine tune our equipment based on the drilling challenges of the Permian, creating unmatched performance. This means minimized non-productive time (NPT), fewer trips, and optimized on-bottom results.

Here are just a few examples of how we tailor drilling equipment for the Permian Basin.

Sprint MWD brings data to your fingertips

The goal of our Sprint MWD ecosystem is to minimize NPT. When working in the Permian Basin, it’s critical to get data updates at extremely high rates. If there is any delay in the speed of data transfer or the reliability of transfer, it can cause issues in the drilling process. Our custom data compression capabilities allow for calculated surveys, 6-axis raw surveys, continuous measurements, azimuthal gamma ray, and total gamma ray to be transmitted at industry-leading data density rates.

We have also implemented technology that minimizes decoding errors, increasing reliability without reducing speed. Plus, our ProShock Stop tool, which is used in all our Permian projects, minimizes the shock and vibe that is so prevalent in this application, further improving reliability.   

Motors offer unprecedented reliability 

With over 100 million feet of drilling experience under our belts, we have developed motor technology that provides tremendous downhole power to deliver top-tier performance. Our clients are looking for both speed and reliability, which is why we offer a best-in-class ProFlex Transmission for the Permian Basin. This technology is for long Vertical-Curve-Lateral (VCL) applications and routinely drills 17,000 feet intervals, resulting in big time savings for the operator. Our transmission eliminates the need for extra trips, minimizing NPT. This technology is especially important for Permian applications, both Midland and Delaware Basins. 

Operators use different hole sizes to meet their wellbore construction requirements, and our technology can accommodate all of their demands. For example, a recent development which has been widely adopted in the Permian is the need to drill the 7 ⅞ hole size. This was a fast-paced industry change that ProDirectional adapted to quickly once we went through our research and development process. We designed and developed a 6 ⅝ motor for the 7 ⅞ hole market — a fully dedicated motorline for that hole size.       

Application engineering ensures we choose the right equipment 

It’s not enough to have the right tools for the job available — you have to know how to use them to maximize performance. This is why we have a dedicated applications engineering team based in the Permian Basin, whose role is to identify performance improvement opportunities and ensure we are utilizing our tools to their full potential.

When drilling, there are many different benchmarks operators are aiming for. Our applications engineering team ensures that our equipment is tailored to help operators meet their goals in the most effective way possible. 

Remote operations increase service quality

The Permian Basin is a large operational area — and many parts of the field present unique challenges for operators. Our Remote Operations Center offers our clients a wealth of knowledge and support when they need it most. Our remote specialist team is consolidated in one location and collaborates together to resolve issues our clients experience in the field in real time. 

For locations where there is poor cell service, we utilize StarLink technology to ensure our remote team can always connect with those on site. With multiple lines of backup communication, there are no situations where the Remote Operations Center cannot keep in touch. There is a real time dashboard to monitor rig operations so that we can be proactive instead of reactive when faced with any drilling or coring challenges. 

The Permian Basin directional drilling presents unique challenges

With over a decade of experience drilling in the Delaware Basin and the Midland Basin, we know the importance of making sure the equipment is right for the job. No matter what geological or well geometry specific challenges our clients face, we know how best to tailor technical solutions to meet their needs. For example, just recently we designed and developed a new float valve to run managed pressure drilling (MPD) applications to ensure they have a better seal — reducing washouts and increasing reliability. 

At ProDirectional, we believe there is an engineering solution for any application challenge. When it comes to the Permian Basin, we’ve experienced many of them first hand and know how to deal with them.

Have an upcoming or ongoing drilling program in the Permian? Get in touch with us today and learn how we recommend tailoring coring and drilling technology to meet your objectives.

Harnessing the Power of Remote Operations Centers for Efficiency and Savings

Remote operations in all industries have become more common in the last few years — from healthcare to education, and of course to oil and gas. A decade ago, managing a drilling operation from hundreds of miles away would seem impossible. However, with the right technology, processes, and people, it’s more than possible — it’s the direction the industry is moving in today.

While some clients hesitate to embrace remote operations simply because they are unfamiliar with them, those who understand the cost savings and additional value a remote operations center (ROC) brings to the project never look back to doing things the conventional way. Within just a few weeks, they realize how valuable a remote operations center is and how much money it can save them in the long run.

ProDirectional is a leader in remote operations, having completed over 30,000 remote tours with a group of highly trained remote operations specialists. And while we certainly save our clients thousands of dollars on each project, it’s in a different way than you might expect.

Going beyond predictable cost savings

You may expect that the main way to reduce costs for the client with a remote operations center is by minimizing the number of personnel on site. As a result, you have a lower day rate and a lower cost of service delivery. All of this is true — by having a remote operations center we are able to reduce the day rate and cost of service delivery for our clients. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to cost savings.

At ProDirectional, we’re never satisfied with the status quo, and are always looking for ways to go above and beyond for our clients. We know that the only way we can succeed is when our clients succeed. This is why the main way we offer cost savings for our clients through a remote operations center is with value creation. 

Adding value through expertise

Our remote operations center is manned by our team of remote operations specialists, all of whom have considerable experience working on rigs. We have a central location for our remote operations at our headquarters, where we also have our directional and MWD coordinators, technical services team, and engineers, all of whom act as resources for our remote operations team. 

Instead of having just one person at the rig, our clients have this exceptional team of professionals available to troubleshoot any type of problem that occurs. We can escalate the issue quickly to the required experts, gather the information we need to solve the problem, and implement the solution within minutes. This simply isn’t possible without a remote operations center in place. 

Having so many eyes available to look at the issue provides a wealth of expertise and experience. We even had a situation where the pressure signature being generated by the rig pumps resulted in all the standard filtering protocols being ineffective for decoding. In this situation, our remote operations team engaged with the right resources to get a custom filter written into code and deployed it quickly in real time in order to decode the data at the surface and communicate with the tools downhole. If our client didn’t have remote operations expertise available to them, this problem would have taken days to solve, resulting in non-productive time (NPT).

What is all of this expertise worth to our clients? While it’s hard to put a dollar amount on it, most would agree it’s in the tens of thousands of dollars at least — especially when you consider the amount of NPT we’re able to help our clients eliminate. 

Ensuring we support you 24/7/365

At ProDirectional, we understand that our clients’ drilling operations run 24/7/365. That’s why our remote operations center runs 24/7/365 as well — and we don’t stop for anything. It’s a mission critical service, which is why we have built in multiple layers of redundancies, both at the center and at the rig, to ensure our support continues no matter what situation we’re in.

Our ROC has a built-in power system redundancy, three levels of communication backups, a detailed disaster recovery plan, and extreme weather event protocols. In addition, we have redundancies at the rig as well, ensuring we never lose communication between the center and the wellsite. 

Not only that, but all of our remote operations specialists also have a full setup at home, so if there is ever a situation where they are unable to come into the center, they can connect from home to provide client support. Our communication platform is proprietary technology we have built for this purpose, and it can be used from anywhere to connect to the rig.

As a result of these redundancies, we have an impeccable record for delivering our remote operations service. There is no situation in which we cannot connect to the rig. The cost of total peace of mind? We think most would agree it’s priceless.

Our Remote Operations Center is at your service

While we have a robust remote operations center, we also have personnel in the field to support changing out downhole and surface equipment when necessary. However, when it comes to major troubleshooting, our remote operations center can handle anything that comes their way — operating in this way is second nature to us after tens of thousands of tours.

Our remote operations center can completely change the trajectory of your project, eliminate NPT, and ensure any issues are resolved immediately. Get in touch with us today to discuss how the remote operations center can benefit your project.