The Oil, Gas and Mining Technical Division of the IEM hosted a one day ‘Drilling Engineering Overview’ seminar on August 5, 2009. It was conducted by Mr. Abdul Razak Yakob and held at the Wisma IEM, attracting 21 participants.
Razak started out with an icebreaking session with the participants, enquiring as to their backgrounds and what the participants wanted to get out of the course.
He then kicked off his seminar with an overall background to the topic. He described the differences between onshore and offshore drilling, and presented photos of various drilling rigs available in the market. He introduced the rig management structure, showing a slide summarizing the various personnel manning the drilling operations.
Razak then discussed the different mechanical parts that make up the drilling equipment, whether on the rig floor or the support peripherals. Among the different equipment that were described was the Christmas tree, drill bit, drilling fluids, casing and cementing. An introduction to interpretation of logging results formed a part of the seminar, giving the participants a taste of analyzing well data. To provide some feel as to the information technology involved in drilling, the software suites used for data management, engineering and facilities integration was shown.
He then moved on to describe the well life cycle stages, which is construction, implementation, analysis and improvement.
Razak introduced the participants to the economical side of the operations, showing some shocking numbers. He then scared the living daylights out of us by providing some insight into the hazards associated with drilling.
Directional drilling was the next topic of the day.
A quick overview of drilling analysis was provided. Participants were reminded of their undergraduate statics courses, where force balances, and torque plays an important part of the analysis.
Casing design was touched upon. This section covered the types of casing integrated into a well, and design considerations. The importance of a correct cement job was discussed, as well as the analytical tests to ensure the cement has the correct properties for the job.
Last but not least was more detail into the drilling fluids, and the required properties for different types of jobs.
The participants were from a mix, covering well grounded engineers who wanted to network and share experiences, to water wellbore engineers looking to see how different types of drilling technologies may be applicable to similar circumstances. And it is always a delight to see Razak in full flow.
Posted by Wata 
Wata - Malaysian Oil and Gas Engineer 