In August 2012, Brandon Cook, from Wilton, New Hampshire, was visiting his grandmother, who was ill with cancer in the hospital. His grandmother was longing for her favorite clam chowder from Panera Bread. However, Panera only sells clam chowder on Friday. So Brandon called the nearby Panera and talked to store manager Suzanne Fortier. Not only did Sue make clam chowder especially for Brandon's grandmother, she included a box of cookies as a gift from the staff. 

This small act of kindness created an earthquake when Brandon told the story on his Facebook page, and Brandon's mother, Gail Cook, retold the story on Panera's fan page. Gail's post generated 500,000 (and counting) "likes" and more than 22,000 comments on Panera's Facebook page.

On one hand, this story shows the power of social media and how the "word-of-mouth" can boost a company's reputation. On the other hand, no matter how busy the world is getting and how hard businesses are trying to make more profit, little has changed in terms of compassion and caring of human being.

Another story was told by Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, to the graduating seniors of Princeton University. During a summer road trip with his grandparents when he was a 10-year-old boy, Bezos, fed up with his grandmother's smoking in the car, calculated his grandmother’s consumption rate of cigarettes, the health risk of each puff, and announced to her with great fanfare, "You've taken 9 years off your life!"

The unexpected reaction was that his grandmother burst into tears and his grandfather pulled the car off to the side of the road and asked young Jeff to step out. His grandfather did not beat him, instead, he gently and calmly said, “Jeff, one day you'll understand that it's harder to be kind than clever.”

There is an old saying, “Business is business.  It’s not personal.”  But in fact, everything about business is personal.

Kindness should go both internally and to clients.  Business is all about creating a “feeling” of trust.  Smartness itself does not secure a trust.  People may be impressed by your cleverness, but they care more how much you care for them. Jeff's story about telling his grandmother that she was taking 9 years off of her life was about being right, rather than being kind.  Actually, in many cases, there are ways to be both correct and kind.  And more importantly, kindness should be over the smartness.

In our drilling software business, kindness is expressed in terms of user-friendliness, among other aspects.  What we try to do is to convert complicated calculations into intuitive tools, which people can use it with ease, without training.

We realize that no matter how smart we are or try to be, if the software is designed only to show our smartness, not with our clients in mind, then, it will be doomed to fail.

Regarding the software usage, no one ever looks back on their life and says, “I wish I’d spent more time at that software.”  For us, software is our core business and we are proud of creating the best of the suites.  For our clients, our products are tools to facilitate their job, so they can spend less time doing calculation and more time to make technical decisions.

Theodore Isaac Rubin, an American psychiatrist and author, said: “Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.”

Small genuine acts of kindness can go a long way, in business world as well as in our personal world. Something all of us should definitely keep in mind.

40 minutes drive from Las Vegas; we came to Red Rock Canyon. To the contract of rainbow of casinos, this desolate area is decorated with some astonishing red rock in a vast of grey plain. The rock is sandstone and the Canyon is home to Southern Paiute Native Americans.

Our eyes are continuously looking for excitements. As we were driving along the 13-mile scenic road, a fast moving car way behind us caught my attention. In a big drop of gray where time seems to have stopped, a vivid color penetrated the dullness, like a sexy lady in red walking into a crowd of businessmen in suit.

Luckily enough, I snapped this shot. It could be better, but…

I wonder who was driving that red car under the desert sun that day and how he or she felt that time. Neither did I know the model of car. All these unknowns did not stop me from enjoying the hot spot.

Someone may have bought the expensive car from a prestigious automaker, but I owned and enjoyed the view at least at that moment.

We do not have to be an automaker to drive a car.

We do not have to own a car to enjoy it, because we can rent it.

Software wise, you do not have to be a programmer to use program. You can always buy from people who do it for living.

And you do not have to own software forever, because you can lease it, at least from PVI

We finished 2012 SPE ATCE in San Antonio on Oct 12^th after 3-day conference and exhibition. It was a very good show, especially for drilling software company like ours. This is our booth.

2012 SPE PVI booth

I spent one day walking through exhibition areas and attending presentations. Whenever I attend industry shows, I am always amazed by how many resources being put to make them happen. Companies worldwide ship booth, send people, man the booth and bring them back after only 2 – 3 days. One of our clients had 2-story booth. Their manager told me that the huge booth would be dismantle and put in a storage place waiting to be shipped to the next show. Booths like that are expensive and logically should be used more often.

Our booth is standard 10 X 10 ft. one. We try to be cost-conscious. It is not cheap to ship it to Calgary or Amsterdam. But looking the companies with heavy equipment in the shows like OTC, we feel lucky to be small.

Technologies bring us virtually closer. We can instantly connect with someone on the other side of globe. However, neither e-mail, instant message nor web meetings diminishes the essential of face-to-face meetings. Seeing is believing. We have more conference than before.

To measure the exact return on investment on road shows is difficult. Our feelings have being telling us to do it. And we have been participating more shows every year.

After the SPE ATCE, I went to Las Vegas for a short vacation. We took a cab from Las Vegas airport. Seeing large crowds of people coming from terminals, I asked the driver: “So many people! Is there a big conference here?” He replied: “This is normal. We need more exhibitions.” “I thought you need more gamblers.” I commented. ”Exhibition is gambling!” He raised his voice a bit.

I paused for a moment, like being struck by lighting. I had that feeling before: exhibition does not guarantee the return on money, like betting.

As I was amazed by his marketing insights, the cab driver continued, “People come to exhibit. And they go gamble.” I could not help laughing out. Both my interpretation and his explanation are correct.

While enjoying break in Vegas, we watched David Copperfield’s Illustration and Bellagio’s O-show, the other forms of exhibitions. They are so far from ordinary.

We left Vegas on Saturday. That night, MGM Grand, with more than 5,000 guest rooms, was 100% full. People will continue to gamble, watch shows, and entertain themselves.

We drilling professionals will continue to showcase and attend latest technologies.

A good exhibition is definitely not gambling. It is an all-win event: for organizer, exhibitors and attendees.

A mud magnet is a bar magnet that looks a lot like an elongated brick.

They are installed in the return mud line just upstream of the possum belly and the shale shaker.  Their purpose is to collect steel particles from the mud stream. Once or twice each day, the magnet is retrieved, scraped, and the collected particles washed, weighed, and examined.

From visual examination of the particles retrieved from the mud magnet, the casing wear mechanism can be identified.  The four possible mechanisms are (1) galling, (2) machining, (3) grinding, and (4) polishing.

1.  The galling process is shown in Figure 1, and the flakes resulting from this process are shown in Figure 2.  High contact pressure forces the tool joints and casing together in intimate contact.  As the tool joint rotates it is `cold welded’ to the casing.  Further rotation pulls pieces from the casing.  These pieces are later dislodged during further rotation of the tool joint.  This is a very aggressive form of casing wear.

Figure 1: Galling

Figure 2: Galling

The flat flakes shown in Figure 2 are typical of the results of galling wear.

If these flat flakes continue for any length of time, you have serious trouble.

2.  The grinding process is shown in Figure 3, and the particles resulting from this process are shown in Figure 4. Here the drill cuttings (sand) carried by the mud stream roll between the tool joints and casing.  If the contact pressure is high enough, the yield strength of the casing (and sometimes the tool joints) will be exceeded, resulting in surface fracturing of both casing and tool joints.

Figure 3: Grinding

The result of this grinding process, shown in Figure 4, is a metallic powder, varying from coarse to fine.  If you are using `unhardbanded’ steel tool joints, grinding will be the dominant form or casing wear that you will see.

Figure 4: Grinding

Judging the significance of the daily weight of material harvested from the mud magnets is a matter of experience.  I know of no way to relate the daily mud magnet collection to the total daily amount worn from the casing.  Sudden increases of grinding debris are a matter of concern.

One thing: check with the on board geologist.  A sudden increase in the volume collected from the mud magnets may be the result of drilling into a formation containing magnetic minerals – probably one of the several iron oxides. (FeO, Fe₂O₃,  Fe₃O₄, ….)

3.  The machining process is shown in Figure 5, and the metallic strings harvested from the mud magnets are shown in Figure 6. This wear results when the tool joints are hardbanded with an alloy containing tungsten carbide particles.  The softer base alloy wears away, leaving the carbide particles exposed.  These particles scrape material from the casing, much as a rasp removes material.

Figure 5: Machining

Figure 6: Machining

Carbide hardbanded tool joints are no longer run in casing, although they offer excellent protection for the tool joints.  If cuttings such as these appear in the material harvested from the mud magnets, you have a serious problem.

4.  The polishing process is shown in Figure 7.  Here the abrasive particles are imbedded in the surface of an elastic supporting material such as pitch, paper, beeswax or rubber.  This is the process used to erase the results of grinding from an optical surface.  In the oil field, this wear results when rubber pipe protectors are run.  Instead of a wear groove, polishing will result in a mirror finish stripe running axially along the inner wall of the casing.

If you wish to use pipe protectors to protect intermediate casing, it is suggested that the first bit run out of casing be run without the protectors.  This will allow the tool joints to wear away the layer of oxidation and mill scale from the area of the casing where the pipe protectors will contact the inner wall.  If this is not done, the friction factor between the pipe protectors and oxide layer will be so high – 0’5 to 0.8 – that it may be impossible to rotate the drill string.  After the mill scale and oxide layer is removed from the casing, the friction factor between rubber protectors and casing can be as low as 0.1.

Figure 7: Polishing

If it weren’t for the chemical and thermal limitations of the rubber protectors, they would be the ideal means to minimize casing wear.

I have no pictures of the very small metallic particles which result from the polishing process. They are similar to the grinding debris shown in Figure 4, but much smaller.

One of Aesop’s famous fables tells of a thirsty crow that couldn’t find any water. Near death, the crow eventually, luckily, comes upon a pitcher.  Unfortunately, the water level in this pitcher is low, so low that the crow’s beak can’t reach the water at its current level. Suddenly, a thought comes to him, and he begins to drop pebbles into the pitcher. With each pebble, the water level rises, closer and closer to the thirsty bird.  Eventually, the water level rises to the point that the crow can quench his thirst.

Aesop, like any writer worth his salt, gave us a fable with a couple of lessons. The one written at the end of the fable is: “little by little does the trick.” But, one could also learn from this fable that ingenuity can lead in significant rewards.  Other readers might take with them the moral that persistence can be the key to survival. Aesop may have also unwittingly given us one of the earliest stories about the importance of tools – even if that tool is something as basic as a rock. Certainly the right tool’s function can spell survival—metaphorical and literal—when the stakes are highest.

The days in which pebbles might qualify as tools feel distant in today’s ever-quickening world. Today, you can pull up just about any fact in the world on a device that fits in the average blue-jean pocket. You can email someone around the world, or arrange to rent a car in Paris while waiting in a fast-food drive-thru in Texas. But, even in an increasingly sophisticated technological climate, simplicity and function are still worthy goals for any tool. And, we at Pegasus Vertex feel that our new drilling software achieves those goals fully. With the help of our software, companies can save time and money, all while making many elements of their operation easier and more efficient.

Technology is a driving force in today’s world. Each new day brings faster computers, better products. And, Apple isn’t the only business expected to produce newer, faster, cleaner versions of their product at rates that themselves seem to quicken. Drilling operators and service companies face the similarly demanding expectations from stock-holders. Business growth isn’t just an ideal. It is necessary for survival. After all, the business that can do things most efficiently is often the one that lives to see tomorrow. With this reality in mind, our valuable drilling software leads to a much more efficient business, which enables growth. With this software, one can identify potential problems, avoid down time, optimize operation capacity, and enable future technological breakthroughs for multiple types of drilling operations.

The software isn’t as simple as a rock, but it is close when it comes to user-friendly design.  The interfaces, though advanced, are easy to use.  Users don’t have to have any special training before operating effectively.  It provides helpful 3D visuals for planning, clear summaries, and analysis that can by generated in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint formats, and many more services.

Recent studies have shown that Aesop may have based his story on real-world visuals.  Recent studies have shown that rooks – birds that most lay civilians would call a crow— are in fact “able to solve complex problems using tools and can easily master the same technique demonstrated in Aesop's fable” (Aesop’s Fable: The Crow). [1]Our solutions too are rooted in reality.  Nowadays, our computer modeling is getting advanced every day. But, the ease with which users can generate those models continues to be easy.  And the results are so clearly worthwhile even a rook could appreciate them!

With the results of the directional survey added to the drilling program covering the measured depth interval from intermediate casing seat to the next casing point, you have enough information to run CWPRO and to determine the significance of the results. Casing wear analysis run at this time will allow you to spotlight possible wear problems in time to take proactive remedial action.

I have employed a procedure which determines the location and estimates the seriousness of potential casing wear problems. A sample of the significant data from such a procedure is shown in Figure 1 and 2. The procedure is as follows.

Run CWPRO with 3 different wear factors, such as, in this example, 0.5, 5.0 and 10.0. This will cover the normal range to be expected from steel tool joints and steel casing running in an unweighted water based drilling fluid.

Looking at the three casing wear vs. measured depth plots, the highest casing wear values occur at about 2,000 ft. measured depth.

Figure 1: Casing Wear for Various Wear Factors

Figure 2: Critical Casing Wear Values

If there was no excessive casing wear associated with the wear factor = 10.0, you probably will have no problems.

However, in the example shown in Figure 1 and 2, casing wear associated with a wear factor of 10 is drastic.

Since WF 10.0 is at the upper end of expected wear factors associated with steel casing and tool joints running in unweighted water based mud, and since there is excessive (disastrous !) casing wear associated with the wear factor = 10.0, you must look at the casing wear predicted for the wear factor = 5.0, and hope that the results are more favorable.

If there is no excessive casing wear associated with the wear factor = 5.0, you probably have no problems, but proceed with caution.

What is ‘excessive casing wear’? This you should decide before you run the casing wear analysis.

The casing wear predicted for the wear factor = 5.0 is 94.7%. This is undoubtedly ‘excessive’.

Therefore, you look at the casing wear predicted for the wear factor = 0.5. This is about the smallest wear factor that you can expect from proprietary tool joints and steel casing run in an unweighted water based drilling fluid.

1. Add lubricant to water based mud;
2. Install proprietary hardbanding on tool joints;
3. Consider using rubber pipe protectors; and/or
4. Use downhole motors. (This reduces total drillstring rotations. This doesn’t reduce the wear rate, but it does reduce the total wear volume.)

If there is excessive casing wear associated with the small wear factor = 0.5, you need to consider drastic means to reduce the rate of casing wear.  Means to be considered are # 3 and #4 from the list above. At this time, I know of no proprietary hardbanding (#2 on the list) that is associated with a wear factor less than 0.5.

In order to execute the above procedure, you must decide what ‘excessive casing wear’ is. Usually, this is based on consideration of acceptable burst and/or collapse values.

For this example, pictured in Fig.1, we arbitrarily define ‘excessive casing wear’ as being greater than 62 %.

Therefore, in the example shown in Fig.1, casing wear at measured depth of 2,000 ft. is ‘excessive’ for the wear factors greater than 0.5.

If you have a reasonable estimate for the wear factor that will apply to the casing wear system you are considering, you might predict casing wear for the following three values of wear factor: (1) half the expected value, (2) the expected value, and (3) twice the expected value of wear factor. This will predict the expected casing wear values bounded by an optimistic and a pessimistic estimate.

For your information, the dogleg severity at measured depth = 2,000 ft. in this example is 6 degrees per 100 ft.

There are two obvious reasons for running the casing wear program – CWPRO, which are:

1. To anticipate and then correct possible casing wear problems: and/or

2. As a post mortem analysis to determine `what happened ?’

Figure 1

What Happened ?

It is far better to anticipate, and then take measures to avoid, the consequences that can result from casing wear. It is also a lot less expensive. If preventive measures are omitted, the following is a sequence of events that can, and have, occurred.

1. As drilling out of casing proceeds, casing wear reduces the wall thickness of a section of the casing.
2. The weakened section ruptures due to the differential pressure between the heavyweight mud in the annulus between the casing and the drill pipe and the formation external to the casing.
3. Drilling mud flows through the casing rupture into the formation.
4. Fluid level in the annulus drops, reducing the hydrostatic pressure at all points in the annulus and open hole.
5. The reduced hydrostatic pressure at (or slightly above) the bit decreases to a value less than the formation pressure.
6. Lightweight formation fluid (oil and gas) can then flow from the formation into the open hole, displacing the heavier weight drilling fluid up and out.
7. This further reduces hydrostatic pressure in the open hole below the intermediate casing seat, resulting in increased flow rate from the formation into the open hole.
8. Formation fluids are expelled from the top of the borehole. This is the characteristic `gusher’ shown in so many pictures.
9. Fairly soon, this `gusher’ can ignite, resulting in a scene similar to that shown in Figure 1.

Therefore, the ideal time to run CWPRO is as soon as possible after the well reaches casing set depth and the results of the directional survey are available. I recommend that you use the raw survey inclination and azimuth data to compute your own values of dogleg severity.

I recommend that you do not accept values of dogleg severity as a function of measured depth that you have not confirmed.

The results of the directional survey are the key ingredients for a casing wear analysis. Everything else is available to be loaded in advance. If you can, get management to authorize 30 ft (or 10 meters) station spacing, rather than the standard (and less expensive) 100 ft (or 30 meter) station spacing, it will give you a more realistic result. As we mentioned earlier in this series, a 3 degree change of borehole direction which takes place uniformly over a 100 foot interval is a lot less liable to produce serious casing wear than is the same 3 degree change which takes place over a 30 ft interval.

So now you have the drillstring specifications, the drilling program from the present casing point to the next casing point – estimated WOB, RPM and ROP values -, and the mud specifications.

What is unknown is the value of the wear factor that applies to your particular casing wear system, unless you have tested the precise casing wear system that will exist in your well. This is quite unlikely.

What we do know are the approximate range of wear factors that apply to various casing wear systems, as listed below:

1. Steel tool joints, steel casings (regardless of grade), water based mud carrying sand: The wear factors for these systems range from about 3.0 to 10.0.
2. Steel tool joints, steel casing (regardless of grade), oil based mud carrying sand: The wear factors for these systems range from about 1.0 to 3.0.
3. Proprietary hardbanding (such as ARNCO 100 XT), steel casing (regardless of grade), water based mud carrying sand: The wear factors for these systems range from about 0.8 to 2.0.
4. Steel tool joints, X – 80 riser steel, water based mud carrying sand: The wear factor for these systems range from about 30.0 to 50.0.

Now, what do we do with all this information? That comes next.

I have been subscribing to Discover magazine for my son who is in high school for two years now. It has become his favorite magazine as well as mine. It fascinates me with all its bizarreness and terminologies, some of which are interesting, and many that are much beyond my understanding.

Recently, a column in the magazine titled “The Afghanistan of Gemstones - Diamonds” caught my eye. I love diamonds, as all women do, but would never relate diamonds to Afghanistan, though I briefly know that this country has a history of abundance of gold. To my surprise, the short statement simply tells how light travels in diamonds.

Many people know the speed of light in a vacuum, which is usually denoted by c (as in Einstein’s icon equation E = mc²), but may not know the speed of light in a diamond. Here’s the answer: the speed at which light travels in diamond is slowed to less than half of that in a vacuum. Why? It is because the diamond plays a reflecting trick. However, Renegade Wireline Services provides oil field support all over the country.

Like getting stuck in a thicket of carbon atoms, any photon that enters the diamond quickly gets bogged down. Within the many facets of the gem, the light pings back and forth inside the multitude of carbon atoms to find an exit, thus reducing its speed considerably. Does this situation sound familiar in Afghanistan? Reading up on these facts somehow reminded me of crude oil. The two just happen to have some striking similarities.

Color

Diamonds come in a variety of colors. Most diamonds are yellow or brown; even diamonds in “colorless” grade would have little or no detectable color. Color has a significant impact on diamonds’ value and appearance.

Crude oil has many colors as well and is one of the indications of its quality. Oil can not only be black or brown, but it can also be red, yellow, or even colorless. Higher quality oil can be golden or amber in color.

Composition

Diamonds are composed of pure carbon. Minute traces of minerals such as boron and nitrogen mixed in with the carbon give the diamond its color.

Crude oil consists of roughly 85% Carbon (C), 12% Hydrogen (H), 5% Sulfur (S), and less than 2% of Nitrogen (N), Oxygen (O), and other metals.

Formation

Diamonds were formed hundreds of millions of years ago under extreme heat and pressure. These conditions deep within the Earth transformed the carbon into colorless crystals. Diamonds surface from within the Earth through magma that cools into igneous rocks known as kimberlites. Vertical structures in the Earth’s crust known as kimberlite pipes are the most important diamond mines.

Millions of years ago, organisms such as algae, plankton, and other living things were buried and decomposed under tremendous pressure and heat. Over time, these organisms turned into the fossil fuels we use today. Often, the oil lies at sandstone and limestone beds.

Geography

The mines containing quality diamonds are primarily in Botswana, Russia, South Africa, Angola, Namibia, Australia, and Congo. It takes an average of 250 tons of mined ore to produce one-carat diamond. According to geophysical surveys, approximately 5,000 kimberlites are currently known in the world.

The ten great crude oil reserves in the world are in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, UAE, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, Libya, Mexico, and USA. About 70% of conventional oil/gas reserves are concentrated in a region stretching from the Middle East to the North of West Siberia - an area deemed as the “Strategic Ellipse.”

Conclusion

Both diamonds and oil are harder and harder to come by, not only due to political reasons, but also because of geographic distribution and technical availability. Natural diamonds can be substituted by synthetic ones (lab-created) at a lower cost. But what about crude oil? Can it be replaced by some type of artificial oil or another alternative? Yes, unconventional oil can be extracted and refined from heavy oils, oil sands, oil shale, and tight sands, but besides its costly and less efficient processes of extraction and production, environmental controls are also taken into consideration.

After all, we can live without diamonds, but can hardly imagine what our lives would be without those things made out of crude oil, for example, gasoline.

When determining the casing wear to be expected over an interval of the intermediate casing, the lateral load per unit length of this intermediate casing is the key quantity to be determined. CWPRO uses the dogleg severity and the drillstring tension to make this determination.

If a wellbore changes direction over a given interval of its measured depth, this will result in a lateral load being applied by the tool joints to the casing over this interval. The lateral load per unit length over any given depth interval is proportional to the dogleg severity which applies over that interval.

Dogleg severity is determined from the results of the directional survey of the well. In a directional survey, the direction of the wellbore is determined at a series of measuring stations. Using the directions measured at the two ends of a survey interval and the distance between these end points, the wellbore is approximated by a circular arc spanning the distance between these two end points.

Thus, the apparent dogleg is uniformly distributed over the length of the survey interval, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Apparent Dogleg

However, if all of the change of direction occurs within a small sub interval, as shown in Figure 2, the dogleg severity may be much larger than the apparent dogleg computed as though the curvature was uniformly distributed over the directional survey station spacing.

Thus, the use of a station spacing which is considerably longer than the extent of the curved section of the borehole can result in the prediction of a longer interval of casing wear which is considerably smaller than that which actually exists within the sub interval.

So, use closer station spacing. Standard survey station spacing is 100 ft or 30 meters. For high resolution, 30 ft or 10 meters spacing can be used.

It is impractical to set station spacing less than 30 ft, since the statistical uncertainty of the directions measured at the survey stations approaches the magnitude of the angles needed to determine the dogleg severity of the station spacing interval.

Figure 2: Real and Apparent Dogleg

In the event that a maximum dogleg severity is specified in the well contract, make sure you see the original survey measures, and not a 5 or 7 point running average of the dogleg severities. CWPRO requires original survey measures (inclination and azimuth) as input.

Artificially low values of the dogleg severity as a function of the measured depth in the intermediate casing can result in the prediction of dangerously low values of casing wear.

A numerical example of this problem is shown in Figures 3 and 4. Figure 3 pictures an `S’ shaped dogleg, and Figure 4 is a table showing the dogleg severities as determined by a series of measures based on 100 ft. survey station spacing , and the value of dogleg severity that actually exist within the survey intervals.

Figure 3: S - Shaped Dogleg Measurements

Figure 4: S - Shaped Severity Measurements