Drifting drill-pipe

23 July 2011 Hi folks,

Perhaps a bit of a challenge to more recent practices .. on the topic of drifting drillpipe, to assure ourselves that subsequent setting balls etc., will pass.

We've been debating whether it is worth the expense (and effort) of using fancy systems for drifting pipe (dropped at surface, seats in a profile, shows a pressure rise, so you know it's landed; hollow so u can pump through it).

The old-fashioned method of "drifting in the derrick" involved people in riding belts, drifts carried aloft on elevator horns and drifts dropped down the stands and landing at the bottom, to be recovered when the stand was picked off the set-back area.

So the new "fancy" system can be seen to eliminate many of those perils.

However, many Drilling Supv have come up with a less elegant, but far cheaper, option : attaching a 95ft tail of Geolograph wire to a suitable length of scaffolding tube (or other suitable hollow item that is large enough to check the drillpipe ID). This is dropped down the string from the drill-floor prior to POOH (or at shoe).

At the end of the day, if this cheap-and-cheerful system hangs up, then the tail will be sticking out at the drill-floor when a stand is broken off.. so we'll know that the drift is stuck in that stand. Being hollow, it can be pumped through.

I guess there are as many opinions out there as there are people, but we'd be interested in any conclusive situations that would seal the debate once and for all.

Thanks

Dave

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