Tag Archives: mud engineers

The Times They Are A-Changin'

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In 1964 Bob Dylan said:

The order is rapidly fadin'

and the first one now will later be last

for the times they are a-changin'.

Those words are more real today than ever before. Viewing it from a technological perspective there’s no doubt in everyone’s mind how the modern world has evolved.  The oil and gas industry as a whole is in an accelerated and continuous state of change due to a combination of engineering, technology and innovation. This change has left no part of the industry untouched.

For instance before, mud engineers most likely did not have time to enjoy a good cup of coffee in the morning when making a mud report due to the amount of time they had to put into it to have it ready on time. As technology advances the story about the cup of coffee is a lot different. Thanks to technology mud engineers now with the help of software can make mud reports in less time and enjoy their coffee while the software does the work.

Change equals progress and progress equals success and that’s the case of our drilling mud reporting software, MUDPRO.

MUDPRO - drilling mud reporting

From its first version to its latest, MUDPRO has come a long way and it is without a doubt one of our most popular software. Even from its first release in 2011, MUDPRO proved to be a great tool for mud engineers. The program allows you to generate daily mud reports, save all data in your computer for further reviews, and manage inventory and cost. MUDPRO also allows you to easily import and export well data, do a recap report in seconds, and perform engineering calculations among many other features. However the way MUDPRO has evolved is proof that here at PVI we are updated with the latest trends. Our priority is to keep our customers satisfied and to make their work load lighter. With software like MUDPRO, mud engineers can become multitasking experts.

Having said all of that, as the industry changes so must the people related to it. In order to thrive in these times, the companies in the oil and gas industry have to be ready for whatever changes and challenges lie ahead. It’s time to keep evolving, because the times they are a-changin’.

Mud Reporting: A Piece of Cake

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Daily tasks can become heavy burdens if we do not use proper tools. These burdens cause us more stress and cost more time. Time is money, but even money cannot buy us time. On the other hand, if we are equipped with the right tools, our productivity increases. We can be happier and capable of controlling what we do.

For mud engineers, daily life starts with the preparation of mud reports in the early morning. In the old days, mud engineers used paper forms to record mud properties, usages and costs. Nowadays, most mud engineers use Excel spreadsheets or computer software like MUDPRO (drilling mud reporting) to do the same jobs. Software has become our most essential weapon to fight the daily battle of mud reporting.

But, not all weapons are created equal. Excel, while serving the purpose of electronically filing mud data, has limitations on keeping track of costs and mud volumes, because the start of each day of drilling is the continuation of the last day of drilling: we need to calculate the accumulative cost and the current inventory of chemicals. Once the drilling is done, mud engineers are required to generate end-of-well reports. At this stage, Excel’s limitations become more obvious. As the number of wells being drilled increase, the difficulties of using Excel arise exponentially.

A better approach is to use a software like MUDPRO, with a back bone of database to record and more importantly, to manage the data. Yes, it is a new piece of software we need to get familiar with, but once you use it for a few days, it can become a habit and a routine; a good one you want to keep. No matter how many days the drilling phase may take, MUDPRO keeps all the history in its database. So, daily efforts of mud reporting are almost the same and at the end of the drilling process, you can just click a couple of buttons to generate the end-of-well recaps.

If we compare the efforts in the overall performance of using Excel and mud reporting software like MUDPRO VS drilling days, we can see the divergence between the two lines.

Mud Reporting-Reporting Efforts VS Drilling Days

Reporting Efforts vs Drilling Days

Managing our time is managing our lives. Using the right software saves us time and enhances our lives. MUDPRO makes mud reporting a piece of cake, which you can enjoy with a cup of morning coffee.

As Smooth As A Cruise

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“For the next four days and nights, you do not need to worry about making meals, washing dishes, finding restaurants or driving around. You are on vacation!” The host of the first night show in the Disney Wonder Cruise ship disclaimed, while everyone in the audience including me bursted into cheers.

With the exception of those of us who are obsessed with cooking and do not want to take breaks from our daily routines, most people love cruise vacations because they free us from those tedious work and bring us to remote places.

Smooth cruises are as fascinating as exotic destinations. Vacationers are looking for fun, excitement, stimulation and pleasant surprises. The expectations of 2,680 passengers are met by 1,000 crew members. On Average, every 3 guests are served by more than 1 crew member. No wonder I felt the impeccable quality of services.

British writer Arthur C. Clarke made Clarke’s Three Laws. The last one of them is: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” My experience aboard the Disney Wonder Cruise reminded me of our drilling software and consulting services we provide to the drilling community.

On the service side, we do drilling engineering consulting to companies or individuals. It is normally one-to-one. Our drilling software, on the other hand, is often one-to-many. We develop a particular solution, such as MUDPRO (drilling mud reporting software), and provide it to mud engineers all over the world.

MUDPRO - Drilling Mud Reporting | Pegasus Vertex, Inc.

We also realize that many drilling fluid engineers actually make some mud reporting software using Excel spreadsheets to replace paper forms. These spreadsheets might serve the purpose of reporting to some degree. However, keeping track of numerous daily reports in terms of spreadsheets and creating end-of-well recaps are challenging, to say the least.

As a drilling software company, we always want to streamline the daily calculations such as mud reporting. MUDPRO is the solution to remove some of the burdens that mud engineers have to carry every morning and at the completion of drilling.

Drilling Mud Report Sample | Pegasus Vertex, Inc.

Like a cruise ship, MUDPRO is created by a team of petroleum engineers, graphical interface designers, programmers and software testers (quality controllers). Quite a few companies think that we have only a couple of genius developing MUDPRO. Far from that, we not only have a group of people involved, but also have spent a few years to arrive at our current level of comprehensiveness of mud reporting.

As software developers, we know that many engineers can program. It is our feeling that unless you love to code, you should leave that dirty and tedious job to some dedicated professionals like the folks at PVI, because we have an experienced team whose mission and passion are software creation.

Cooking meals, or washing dishes in a cruise ship? I don’t think so. Developing drilling software while drilling a well? That is the reason I recommend PVI drilling software for your next drilling project. This way you can be on cruise control; as smooth as the cruise journey I am taking.  Safe travels.

“All that is gold does not glitter” - Drilling Mud

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ScienceNewsforKids.org has recently posted an article titled “Mud worth than gold”, which happened to be the “Nose in the News” project for my 3rd grade son. Though this article is a little hard for a 3rd grader to analyze, its title is rather attractive. The article tells the sample mud collected from far below Antarctica’s ice by two scientists and their drilling crew contains valuable information. This might help reveal the secrets of the continent’s ancient climate, thus help on future weather prediction.

Coincidentally, in this September, a report from “marketsandmarkets.com” also has something to say about mud. The report with a long title "Drilling Fluids (Drilling Mud) Market and Completion Fluids Market: by Types (Water-Based Systems, Oil-Based Systems, Synthetic-Based Systems, Other Based Systems), Application Areas (Onshore and Offshore), & Geography - Global trends and forecast to 2018 " defines and segments the global drilling fluids and completion fluids market with analysis and revenue forecast. It predicts that the drilling fluids and completion fluids market will grow from an estimated $10.6 billion in 2013 to $15.2 billion by 2018.

All that is gold does not glitter

Regardless of its meaning and the context, the title of J. R. Tolkien’s poem “All that is gold does not glitter” would certainly apply to drilling mud. According to industry statistics, drilling mud takes approximately 10% to 15% of the total drilling cost. With the needs of more deep sea drilling and ever fast drilling rate, drilling fluids are used on day-to-day basis and plays a vital role in drilling process: controlling formation pressure, sealing permeable formations, stabilizing the wellbore, suspending the drill cuttings, and cooling and lubricating the drilling bit etc.

Drilling fluids are basically categorized into 3 types: water-based mud (WBM), oil-based mud (OBM) and synthetic-based fluid (SBM). When choosing a drilling fluid, factors like well design, cost, technical performance, environmental impact all need to be considered. WBM and OBM are commonly used nowadays. They are complex compositions with various additives such as minerals and chemicals. As the well drilling reaches various depths, it requires different type of drilling fluids to meet the specific drilling condition, where demands the balance between the properties and the additives in the mud. Small problems with mud may lead to severe problems like lost in mud circulation, gas escaping or even blowout.

Among those who work on the drilling rigs, mud engineers are the ones who frequently and closely deal with the drilling mud. Their job is 24/7.  A mud engineer’s duty not only involves in prescribing mud treatments, maintaining the drilling fluids, but also keeping continuous mud reporting every day. To them, time management is more important than ever. Besides powerful computer aids, software like MUDPRO developed by PVI is a great way to enhance the mud engineer’s ability on mud data recording and analyzing, hydraulics calculating, inventory tracking and daily reports/recap generating.

As drilling technology advances, drilling fluids are innovated and designed to be not only cost effective but also environmentally safe. Research on Non-toxic bio degradable drilling fluids with nanotechnology is being conducted and huge investment is being made. This type of fluids not only provides higher transfer efficiency and better thermal conductivity but also removes toxic metals. After all, protecting the environment has enormous impact to our future generations.

A New Definition of Insanity

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The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results. No one likes to do the same thing over and over again if someone or something else can do it, even if it gives the same results. And since mud engineers love automation and hate repetitive calculations, PVI came up with a software package that does calculations for you. We call it MUDPRO.

Every morning mud engineers collect data on drilling rigs, fluid properties and chemical inventories, do solid analysis, volume tracking and perform hydraulics calculations. It’s tedious to do it consistently and correctly every day. In the olden days, these tasks were usually done manually on pieces of paper. As things progressed, the computer and Excel spreadsheets eased some of the burden. But there were still challenges, like how to manage the large number of spreadsheets generated every day and how to get a single end-of-well report created from all the daily spreadsheets.

Here at PVI we felt your pain and initiated a project to automate mud reporting. There was lots of excitement among our software engineers as they solved mud reporting problems for you. We even had a big pizza party after we finished it to celebrate. Maybe we’ll invite you to the next one.

The result of all that pizza is a sophisticated yet simple mud reporting software called MUDPRO. The easy-to-use software bridges the gap between rig and office, and makes data collection and information sharing a breeze with just a few clicks.

MUDPRO reports make great wall decorations.

MUDPRO reports make great wall decorations.

Right out of the box, you can start entering pertinent data into MUDPRO; it’s that easy to use. MUDPRO draws wellbore schematics, calculates the cost of materials and generates daily reports. And MUDPRO puts all your data into a database so later you can post well audits and create recap reports as soon as the well is completed without having to manually compile the data.

Personally, I hate keeping track of time and mileage because it’s just tedious. But automation makes my life simpler and less stressful. As a software developer, the geek in me is thrilled to see all that mud data tracked without mud engineers having to turn into bookkeepers. So now you can use your expertise and time more wisely using our MUDPRO software and save your insanity for the dance floor.