EXPLORATION • DRILLING • FIELD SERVICES
SECTION TITLE
Samples of coatings on OCTG
CONTROL CORROSION
Andrei Baev & Christopher Wilkins discuss advances in abrasion resistance and mitigating corrosion
B
efore the fi rst US oil well was drilled, large amounts of oil came from whales. Whale oil was burned in everyday lamps, and by
the 1840s the industry was large enough that several hundred fl eets sailed the world’s oceans hunting for whales. Very small amounts of petroleum oil were also burned. T at oil was skimmed from the lakes it had seeped into from below. All that changed when the fi rst US oil well was drilled on August 27, 1859 by Edwin L. Drake. For eight years Drake had worked as a conductor for the New York and New Haven Railroad, but retired for health reasons. He retained his conductor’s license, though, which allowed him free rail travel. For this reason a group of investors recruited him to visit a farm in
Titusville, Florida, and report on oil said to be seeping up from the earth there. Seneca Oil Company was created, and Drake employed as its general agent. To fi nd the source of the oil, Drake had to dig deep. However, the well began to collapse at 16ft. He began to use 10ft
pipes to lien the borehole, connecting them one by one and driving them into the earth to keep the wellbore from collapsing. At 69ft, he struck oil. It pooled in the 16ft dugout, and Drake came up with the idea of using a pump to extract oil from the well. He used a common hand pump for water wells, and collected the oil in a bathtub. T is pumping application is commonly seen in today’s rod pump technology. Roughly two million oil wells are
producing worldwide, over half using some sort of lift technology, 750,000 of them rod pumps. T is total includes 350,000 rod pump wells in the USA. However, the technology is imperfect. Deviations and doglegs in wellbores often cause rod wear, which can result in failure. T is occurs when a sucker rod rubs against
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