Ingenuity Requires Persistence

There are several quotes from famous authors that talk about how “ingenuity can lead to significant rewards and how “persistence can be the key to survival. However, how high are the stakes when it comes to ingenuity and persistence in order to obtain significant rewards?

On the path towards any goal worth striving for, there are going to be obstacles, however, these obstacles cannot stop you from reaching your destination, it’s an opportunity to prove just how much this goal means to you. These are the moments in which to engage in persistence where you simply refuse to be deterred by the hurdles that one finds on any journey worth taking.

Increasing sophisticated and technological software is always the main goal; but simplicity and functionality are without a doubt very essential aspects of a software that must be kept in mind at all times during the developing process.

Technology is advancing unimaginably in today’s world. Each day new technology comes to live and brings the world better products. The drilling industry faces similar expectations and its growth isn’t just demanding but also fundamental for survival. With this in mind, we feel that our drilling software aims to achieve those goals fully. With the help of PVI software, companies worldwide can benefit not only by saving time, but also by saving money while making their operations more efficient and effective.

As an example of how ingenuity requires persistence let’s talk about HYDPRO, our drilling hydraulics model.

HYDPRO - Drilling-Hydraulics | Pegasus Vertex, Inc. - Drilling Software

When drilling a vertical or an extended-reach well, if the equivalent circulating density (ECD) is either too low or too high, it can cause serious problems or compromise the project. For this reason a successful drilling operation largely relies on achieving the optimal ECD, and an optimized drilling hydraulics software can allow engineers to plan ahead, improve drilling efficiencies and reduce the risks. HYDPRO is a well-developed model, but when it comes to its user-friendly design as well as the interfaces, users will find it very simple and operate it effectively. It provides 3D visualization for planning, as well as summaries and analysis results that can be generated in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint formats in no time.

HYDPRO covers all aspects of hydraulics, for instance:

  • Downhole circulating pressures
  • Surge and swab
  • Equivalent circulation densities (ECD)
  • Bit optimization
  • Hole cleaning
  • Cuttings concentration
  • Volumetric displacements

Thanks to a software like HYPDRO, the downhole drilling conditions can be cautiously examined and any potential problems can be identified prior to the job execution.

Today, our computer modeling is getting more advanced and the results are clearly worthwhile, because in the end is all about focusing on ingenuity and focusing on persistence.

 

Drilling Hydraulics Software Training in Bolivia

As part of the software sale to a service company in Bolivia, software training was conducted in Santa Cruz of Bolivia, the 2nd largest city in the country.

Being south of equator, it is summer in Bolivia. Hot and humid, the weather is similar to Houston’s a few months ago. I immediately got used to it, until I was woken up by big noise of birds this morning. You know what? They are parrots singing in the giant tree in front of my room. That was a pleasant surprise. Those birds would be very nice pets in Houston. Although I don’t speak their language, I knew they were very happy.

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Our training was on drilling hydraulics (HYDPRO). We had a dozen of students ranging from seasoned mud engineers to newly graduates. The biggest challenge I faced was the communication: they speak more English than I do Spanish. None was sufficient to understand each other. We had a couple of engineers, educated in US, interpreting for everyone.

The teaching went smoother when I started to demo HYDPRO. HYDPRO does have an option to switch to Spanish, which means all captions including those in reports could be in Spanish. But even without using the local language, our students had fairly grip in understanding the program structure and logic flow.

I think their knowledge of drilling fluid, mud engineering and hydraulics helps them tremendously. And I also think we did a good job in interface design so that it breaks language barriers for our users whose native language is not English.

After all, drilling operations are similar across the world. We speak different languages, but we use API standard drill pipe, casing, and handful rheological models to describe fluid behavior. Our drilling software is a tool beyond boundaries, which can be used by drilling engineers in North America, South America, and any other continents.

One student in the training showed me a programmable scientific calculator, using which he had coded a remarkably drilling hydraulics program. Here is the picture of his “Hidraulica de perforacion”.

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This is the picture of our HYDPRO training.

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My first trip to Bolivia was fruitful. I am sure I will come back for business or vacation: my visa is valid for 5 years with the onetime fee of $125!

Paper and E-reader vs. Book and HYDPRO

“Paper: The original wireless communication”. This is a sentence in Sappi Fine Paper North America’s eQ Journal 004. So interestingly stated, it tells a lot about human being’s communication need in the age of a digitalized world. “The World Wide Web, far from decreasing paper consumption, served to increase the amount of printing done at home and in the office.” Abigail J. Sellen and Richard H. R. Harper wrote in “The Myth of the Paperless Office”. After people began to use e-mail in the 1990s, paper consumption is estimated to have increased by some 40%. Neither is eBook device nor screen likely to make print on paper obsolete.

For my own reading pleasure, I use these 2 devices whenever I travel.

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The convenience of carrying hundreds of books in one device allows me to switch between the books with a great flexibility, although I still enjoy reading paper books in my backyard. The tactile sensation of fingers turning fine-grain papers and the smell of ink and paper are also parts of reading experience. Developed 2000 years apart, paper and digital technologies not only co-exist, but also enhance the synergy between them as paper is routinely converted to digital documents and digital documents to paper.

We also see this 2-way conversion in the engineering efforts of drilling software developments. In 2012, Prof. Boyun Guo from University of Louisiana at Lafayette and I jointly wrote a book about drilling hydraulics (Applied Drilling Circulation Systems).

This book covers many areas of hydraulics concerns of drilling and mud engineers, with theories, examples, and operation guidelines: a good source of information and knowledge for petroleum engineering students and engineers.

Quite a few years ago, PVI developed its popular drilling hydraulics software HYDPRO which addresses majority of drilling hydraulics including frictional pressure drop, ECD, bit optimization and hole cleaning etc.

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Similar technologies, delivered in traditional paper and the state-of-the-art application, serve drilling engineers’ essential need to understand and optimize drilling hydraulics. Equations in the book are the DNA of the HYDPRO, while the software is the screen play of the book.

Drilling software like HYDPRO is a great vehicle to carry the heavy loads of technologies. Yet, it provides engineers with easy-to learn and simple-to-use experience.