Swag, Drill Bits, and Bad Abbrevs

Thursday hit HARD this week.

No sleep, crazy projects, kids going back to school (IYKYK).

So we don't have an agenda, but that's where the best ideas come from... and we covered some great topics!

It was Easter Sunday and a completions engineer put something about a dinosaur eating something in his report. I was reading this report and took a picture of it and sent it back to him. He died laughing.
- Wade

Show Notes

• Swag: Thank you Underdog Wireline and Pipewhisperer for our swag!
• Oil & Gas Abbreviations: Testing knowledge of DLS, VS, and ROP, with real industry definitions
• Drill Bit Technology Evolution - From tricones to PDCs to the advanced Chimera hybrid bits that combine roller cones with PDC blades for better performance
• Core Sample Deep Dive - Wade shows actual core samples from 10,000+ feet deep and explains the complex coring operations used to extract rock for geological analysis
• Tripping Operations & Challenges - The complexities of pulling 52,000 feet of pipe on ultra-long wells, mud circulation, and avoiding getting stuck downhole
• Uphole Zone Development - Exploring secondary drilling targets in older wells to extend their productive life before abandonment

Transcript

Peter: Wade and I barely made it to the microphone today. I think between lack of sleep and kids starting school... But here's the thing, I woke up today and I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna represent some swag. So I feel like the Fresh Prince right now. Got a hat from Underdog Wireline.

Wade: Rough week for both of us.

Peter: The upside down logo is totally a Texas thing. I think some company in Texas started that whole deal and it's just taking off like wildfire.

Wade: Yeah, well he probably made a whole lot more money on those hats than he has on his minerals.

Peter: Probably. Pipe Whisperer sent us some gear too. So man, this is a quality shirt. I love the Punisher logo. Have you seen the movie?

Wade: I haven't seen the movie. I saw it on American Sniper, you know, like the Punisher logo on their armored cars and stuff. That'd scare me.

Peter: Yeah, the Punisher is a great movie. I watched it back in college probably the last time, but his logo is amazing. I gave my son a handful of stickers and the next morning I go into his room and he's got them all over his room - on the walls and his dresser. It's good.

Wade: Awesome. We just bought a new cooler here a few weeks ago and my whole goal was to fill that thing up with stickers.

Peter: Well, I'll make sure if you haven't gotten any, I'll make sure you get some.

Podcast Content and Editing Discussion

Peter: Well, hey, we don't have much of a show planned, but I think that's really where our best ideas come from. Last week we had an amazing interview, got a ton of comments. And what I've noticed is people don't really listen to our full podcast, which is totally fine. They go watch the clips on TikTok or YouTube. But it's so interesting when they don't get the full context, right? It's not intentional, it's just like you might miss a comment here or there because they're so short.

So if you're watching this on TikTok and you're not watching the full episode, please go over to YouTube and check it out. Just get the full immersion of Wade and Peter in your life.

And on that note, if you know anyone that does video editing in oil and gas and wants to talk to us, we're trying to find someone to help us with our clips. Maybe the problem's me, but if you know anyone, send them our direction. We'd love to talk to them. We're trying to make this a little bit less time-consuming for me and Wade and maybe bring another person in that can help us with the editing side.

What is Pigging?

Peter: All right, so my first question for the day is: what is pigging?

Wade: Alright, so everyone needs to know I focus on drilling and I don't get all the questions beforehand, so I'll answer the best of my ability.

Pigging is when they send what they call a pig - it's like a big aluminum or maybe even steel device that they send down pipelines. You shoot them down pipelines and what they essentially do is clean it out. They're pretty close to the outer diameter of whatever pipe you're running it through. So you run it through there and it'll clean out paraffin, push out fluid and liquids ahead of it, and do all that different stuff. Essentially you're just cleaning out all your pipelines.

If water sits there, it's corrosive or it can freeze or cause issues. Paraffin will build up over time. There are all different kinds of problems associated with not pigging lines.

One thing that's kind of interesting about pigging - there was a guy I used to go to church with who apparently made good money building some kind of flagging system for when they're pigging these lines. As the pig moves down the pipeline, you start a pig on one end and it comes down the other. But if there's a lot of paraffin or something in there, that pig will stop somewhere. So how do you know where it stopped? How do you retrieve it?

They've got these flagging systems that they can put on the lines. As the pig moves down through there, the flag will indicate that it's past that point. So when you have to troubleshoot where the pig is and how to get it out, you have a general idea of where it is in the lines.

I haven't done tons of pigging operations - in fact, I've done zero - but I always thought it was really interesting to hear people talk about it. I believe they're doing miles and miles of lines at a time.

Personal Story - Family Business

Peter: When I was a kid, my parents built a new addition to our house because they went from having three kids to six kids. Three boys, three girls - it was great.

Wade: That's Brady Bunch type stuff!

Peter: It really was. And embarrassing story - when we'd go on family vacations, my parents would put all six of us in matching red t-shirts so they could spot us in the crowd. I can tell you there is nothing more embarrassing than when you're 17 years old and your crush sees you wearing the same shirt as all your siblings.

Wade: What kind of business meeting are you talking about as a 17-year-old?

Peter: We had a family business and my dad would take the whole family once a year to the big conferences. We got to know all these families that were in the same business. When I got older, like 15, my dad would actually take me into the meetings and I would get to listen in. You hear all these people talking about operations and how to fix things and how to make improvements. That's really where I got obsessed with operations.

I loved it. You'd sit down with the white tablecloths and all the tables set up, and I thought it was amazing - they had glasses of water and coffee in the back. If there's one thing I'd go back and do with my dad, I would go do that again. Since he sold the business, if I could go to another meeting with him, I'd kill for that again. That was fun.

Oil & Gas Abbreviations Quiz

Peter: Speaking of abbreviations, I've got three abbreviations here. We've had this discussion before where they're all different.

Wade: Yeah, there's tons. Everybody uses different ones. There are some that are universal.

DLS

Peter: What is DLS?

Wade: Dogleg severity. It's talking about when you're drilling your curve. It's the rate at which you're changing your angle over usually 100 feet. That was an easy one - that's universal.

Peter: Perfect! The Wikipedia definition was "a measure of how sharply the wellbore is curving, typically expressed in degrees per 100 feet." You're one for one.

VSV

Peter: The next one is VSV.

Wade: Vertical section. These are all directional terms. Vertical section is your distance horizontally from your surface hole location.

Peter: Wikipedia says "the distance along a projected vertical plane often used for planning purposes." Two for two.

ROP

Peter: ROP.

Wade: Rate of penetration - how fast you're drilling.

Peter: Three for three! Easy. Next time I'm gonna pick more difficult ones.

Wade: Those are easy because you stayed in drilling. You start getting into production, but I mean seriously, there's acronyms for every single thing. It's because we've been writing reports for decades. Who wants to write "trip out of hole" all the time? So you know, TOH.

Report Writing Stories

Peter: I was listening in on a TikTok live and there were some cool guys talking who said they would write their reports and put "GFY" just to see if anyone would pick it up. And no one ever caught it. No one ever read the reports.

Wade: One of the companies I worked for over a decade ago - it was Easter Sunday and a completions engineer put something about a dinosaur eating something in his report. I was reading this report and took a picture of it and sent it back to him. He died laughing and said, "Yeah, you're the only person who caught it." I just thought it was hilarious that you put that out there just to see who's reading your report.

Peter: I do that all the time with our academy interns. I'll put little Easter eggs in there just to see if they're reading - like what color did I put in the third paragraph. It's kind of fun. They usually don't catch it.

Drill Bits Discussion

Peter: I want to talk about drill bits. It's such a huge topic. When you really get into the finer details of what those things are, there's a lot to a drill bit. Drill bits always turn to the right, and we've got PDC, tricone, roller cone - all kinds of varieties. In Oklahoma, what drill bits do you guys typically use? Do you gravitate towards one type over another?

Wade: PDCs are a newer invention than the roller cones and tricones. There were still a lot of tricones in use when I first started out in the field in the early 2000s. PDCs came around that time, probably a little bit sooner, but adoption sometimes takes a while.

I would say that PDCs are the predominant bit type run everywhere across the world now. There are always situations and use cases for each kind of bit - button bits, tricones, PDCs. Those are big general categories. PDCs are used most because they're just so much faster. They work by a cutting, scraping action using those polycrystalline cutters. Because of that, instead of using the crushing action that you see with the roller cones or tricones, it cuts holes so much faster.

Now in some formations, you'll put a PDC in there and it will only last like a few feet because it's so abrasive or difficult. But I would say across the board, when you think of a bit, just think of a PDC.

We'll use roller cones at times, like when you're sliding and trying to build angle or something like that. If you're in a really difficult curve, you could put in a tricone for better tool face control.

Chimera Bits

Wade: Here's something you need to look up - Google "chimera bit," K-Y-M-E-R-A.

Peter: [Looking it up] Whoa.

Wade: When I was at Baker in the early 2000s, they were still developing this. I remember sitting in a meeting and they were talking about this hybrid bit. They were like, "It's super quiet." They hadn't even really made it yet, but they had these sketches. Sometimes you see things like that and you think maybe we're stretching it a little too far here, guys.

But I'll tell you, I run almost exclusive chimeras in our curves. A lot of times we have a really difficult time holding tool face with our PDCs or we get unreliable build rates. In some formations, you get really good, high yields. Some of them are lower yields. That chimera really helps level a lot of that out and it's much more consistent in our stuff here in Oklahoma.

Peter: It's a very pretty looking bit. It's very intricate and there's a lot going on with it.

Wade: Two cones and three or four blades. You're really marrying those PDC blades with the roller cone and it does a pretty solid job.

Long Wells and Tripping Operations

Peter: We were talking about Expand Energy a couple weeks ago. They have the longest well at 34,000 feet. I wonder if they were using a Chimera bit or something else.

Wade: I'm sure they were probably using PDCs. When you're starting to reach out that far, you're really worried about torque and drag, weight transfer - all those different things really start playing in.

Peter: Because if you need to replace your bit, you still have to trip out entirely to put a new bit on. That's just...

Wade: Oh yeah. A trip that long... Even with good crews, we've had some rigs that'll trip 4,000 feet an hour, which is great turnaround time and really saves you on your days of drilling. But when you're out there at 26,000 feet, that's still a long trip when you're talking about round trip on 52,000 feet of pipe.

Peter: So when you're tripping out and going back into the hole, is that difficult to navigate?

Wade: It will be if you've got problems. If there's tons of washout or something like that, your bit can have a hard time finding the hole. Even in a vertical, if the washout's big enough, it'll drag like 30 or 40K. You kind of have to pick up and go a little bit slower and it finds the hole and then you get back to tripping like normal.

But if your hole isn't clean, if shale's fallen in on you, you can 100% get stuck on a trip. When you're pulling that pipe out of the hole, it works kind of like pulling a plunger out of a syringe. If your hole isn't very stable and you're pulling pipe really quick, you can "swab the hole" and pull in formation.

What you're drilling is really competent rock. Let me show you some core samples.

Core Samples

Wade: [Shows core samples] This is a core sample of something that was drilled 10,000 feet down a hole. You can see all the different... This one is from 10,959 feet down. When we brought it out, it actually cracked right there. You can see the shells and everything. It's pretty neat stuff to be able to hold in your hand.

Peter: That's really cool.

Wade: This brings up coring operations. I've done a couple of coring jobs. You essentially take a coring bit - it looks like a PDC bit but it's got a big hole in the middle of it. As you're drilling down, the core remains up inside your BHA and gets into what they call a core barrel.

Once you've filled up the maximum length of your core barrel, you trip out of the hole. You have to trip out slowly so you're not... you can imagine the pressure downhole. If you brought it up too quick, it's just gonna break and you're gonna have dust when you get to surface. You have to be really careful on how fast you trip. You have to stage out of the hole - it's like diving, getting the bends.

Peter: I'm sure they use it for more than just memories though.

Wade: Yeah, they're doing all kinds of science on it - determining porosity, permeability. There's tons of work. There are a few labs across the country that are known for their research on coring operations.

Mud and Trip Tanks

Peter: When you're tripping out, you got all this mud that's still downhole - the mud stays, right?

Wade: Oh yeah, 100%. As you trip out, we've got a trip tank on surface, usually about 100 barrels, and we circulate across the top of the hole. As you're pulling out of the hole, all your metal is coming out - your drill string. You have to replace that volume in the hole with fluid, or otherwise the fluid volume will continue to decrease and you could get light on your hydrostatic and your formation starts to flow.

One of the things you always have to watch on your trips is how much fill it's taking. Depending on your drill pipe size, you know exactly how much it should be taking. You've got to watch that trip tank really carefully. If it's not taking enough fluid, then what's coming into that wellbore? It's usually gas, or it could be salt water flow.

You need to make sure it's taking the proper amount of fluid or you've got a problem. You probably shouldn't trip all the way out to surface because then you can't control the well if you're at surface and it's flowing on you.

Uphole Zone Development

Peter: You sent me an email this week about uphole zone development. I'd never heard the term "uphole" before.

Wade: Essentially on uphole zone development, what I was meaning is a lot of these guys will go in and buy an old well, or if you're at an oil and gas company and they used to drill wells all over the place - say they drilled Mara wells or Mississippi wells down at 10 or 11,000 feet. That well is now no longer productive. You've pretty much flowed all of it out, it's loading up all the time, and you're not making any money on it.

Before you shut in the well or plug and abandon it or sell it, you usually go back, look at your logs, and look at any zones uphole to see if they might be prospective. Would it be worth going down and putting a little frack on it and seeing if it'd flow?

When I talk about uphole zone development or analysis, your primary zone is now no longer economic and you're just looking to squeeze more blood out of that orange.

Peter: Is that considered a workover then?

Wade: I don't think you'd really consider it a workover. It's not a refrac either. You're just perforating new zones. You're looking for new zones uphole.

Closing

Peter: Man, there's so much we could talk about, but I think today, just being that both of us are running on fumes and trying to hold it together, we'll save everyone some time this week and cut off early.

We're looking to do some more interviews in the next couple of weeks too. We've got some folks lined up and are really excited to talk about interesting aspects. We really want to talk to some guys that are putting hands on tools. It's just hard to find them that can get away with it with their company.

Anyways, thank you guys for listening to this week. I apologize for the shorter episode, but Wade and I are gonna go get some R&R and we'll see y'all next week. Thanks!

Wade: Thank you.