Welcome to the first edition of HXR’s Newsletter! In the coming months, we’ll be addressing issues that we all encounter on our drilling projects, and we hope we can share some insights that may help improve operations. We’d appreciate your feedback, and if we can establish a dialogue between engineers and geoscience professionals then we’ve achieved our goal.
Many people ask my partner and me why we started HXR. After all, we have several competitors, we’re a small company with a tough uphill road to travel in terms of name recognition, and the role of the “conventional” ERD Company is well established in the industry. You only get one life to build up a life’s savings – if you are intent on blowing it all, wouldn’t Vegas be more fun?
So why?
Because “All the pump, all the rotary, all the time” is not always the answer. Training, practices, drilling trend evaluation and well design are crucial aspects of a successful ERD or deepwater well, but they don’t address two facts that we all know is true – it is critical for engineering and geoscience to work closely together, and the best design or drilling practices don’t matter if the wellbore is collapsing or kicking due to lack of data in the pre-drill design phase. By the time you find cavings coming over the shakers, it could be too late.
HXR’s goal is to integrate conventional ERD practices and field operations with pore pressure and geomechanics/wellbore stability services. By integrating these services, by having our geoscience staff working side by side with our design or field engineers, we ensure that critical, necessary communication between disciplines.
How do you convince operators you are qualified to do the job?
By letting them test our software for themselves. Our engineering software, for example, was tested extensively by the technical team at one of the largest oil companies in the world and is co-developed by a very well established drilling engineering software provider out of Houston. Our pore pressure software is developed and studies are overseen by a world-renowned professor in pore pressure evaluation who was also an in-house trainer for several of the largest deepwater exploration companies in the Gulf of Mexico and globally. Our geomechanics staff use the same software as arguably the most respected WBS research company in the world. Our personnel have decades of experience in ERD and deepwater drilling projects, and have been on some of the highest-profile projects in the world.
What kind of people do you hire?
Experienced people. DD’s, drilling fluids specialists, ERD Advisors, drilling engineers with operator experience, long-time companymen experienced in the areas we have operations, professional geoscientists preferably with experience in our areas of operation. HXR takes pride in our people – we couldn’t do it without them. They all have a stake in our client’s success, because it means not only HXR’s success, but their own as well. A man (or woman) is only as good as their reputation; so it goes with small privately owned companies.
What kind of services can your company provide?
ERD well design and feasibility studies, training courses, and onsite engineering. Deepwater services including well design, wellsite engineering, and pore pressure prediction. Geomechanics and wellbore stability design and onsite services both on and offshore.
Sounds good, but do you do any “real” research of your own, or did you simply copy the “redbook” from college?
We do. We are working with several other companies, and one of the only oilfield tech schools in the US, to build a full-sized flow loop to develop and test hole cleaning equations and techniques. Our pore pressure team is constantly updating our software with new equations and techniques to better calculate and project expected pressures while drilling, and we encourage our clients to provide us with test equations that can easily be put into our software for evaluation. Lastly, we constantly upgrade our engineering software with new algorithms, then test them in the field.
I hope this has given you a better idea of HXR and what we can offer. This is a tough time in the oil patch – dollars are tight, and operators can’t afford to contract companies that can’t get the job done. HXR can get the job done, and we offer the services that, frankly, our competitors should be offering to ensure the successful drilling of ERD and Deepwater wells.
Thanks for taking the time to read our newsletter. Good luck with your projects – let us know if we can help. Most importantly, be safe out there, folks.
Regards,
Chris Speziale
About the Author
Posted on: July 14th, 2015
Filed under: Articles, Blog, Deepwater Drilling, Extended Reach Drilling, Geomechanics, Pore Pressure
Congratulations on the first newsletter!