Electrical/mechanical hybrid rigs offer drilling advantages
Lagersen Drilling Co., founded in April 1976, is operating five rigs that, for their capacities are, to our knowledge, the most fuel efficient, maintenance-free, and portable in the industry. The rigs are a combination electrical/mechanical design with a General Electric two-on-two dc control system. We use them in the 12,000 to 20,000-ft range (Fig. 1). Rig 4 began operating in July 1981 in Eastern Oklahoma while Rigs 5 and 6 have been drilling in North Louisiana and East Texas since September 1981. Rigs 7 and 8 began operating in Western Oklahoma in early 1982. All five rigs are designed essentially identically except Rig 5 is a 1,000-hp rig. These hybrids result from a program begun in 1979 after 5 years of experience working with mechanical rigs. The compounded mechanical rigs operated just about as well as would be expected, but were not as cost efficient as desired. New rig design. We felt that as a relatively small drilling contractor we had to be able to offer more service-more hole for the money--in order to compete. And, as the industry changes, rigs that are going to be stacked will be the least efficient ones. We expect that as the cost of fuel climbs, the fuel efficiency of drilling rigs will be looked at more and more closely. The first thing we decided was that we wanted a rig designed to work efficiently in the 12-20,000-ft range, and that it would be electric. We wanted the deep hole (more than 15,000 ft) capability while avoiding what we see as inefficiencies inherent to larger rigs rated for 25,000 or 30,000 ft. For one thing, less than 9% of all deep wells drilled exceed 20,000 ft. The choice of electric drive isn't very startling. But we weren't convinced that we had seen an electric system that couldn't be improved upon.
- Research Organization:
- Lagersen Drilling Co. Inc., Shreveport, LA
- OSTI ID:
- 6931099
- Journal Information:
- Oil Gas J.; (United States), Vol. 81:37
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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