By Jeffery A. Spray, Confluent Systems and DTS Corporation

BACKGROUND

The energy industry has been slow to act on its recognition that the majority of its drilling costs are actually due not to ROP, but to the costs of stopping drilling in order to control troublesome geology. These non-productive periods often also add major investments in running and cementing numerous strings of casing. Only in the last decade has increased activity in deepwater exploration, along with inflating costs in other E&P, led to aggressive development of expandable tubulars which promised to address these problems. Many important accomplishments have been made and important new goals identified throughout expandables R&D. Expandable technology has not yet dramatically changed the mainstream industry, but that time now appears to be close at hand.

It is increasingly understood that some fundamental limitations exist for conventional expansion processes. For industry-wide acceptance of expandables to occur, they must overcome the three challenges of demonstrating reliability, strength, and efficient delivery of integrated solutions. An innovative new technology has now arrived which more reliably expands, is considerably stronger, and demonstrates notable value potential. It is currently emerging as a source of major improvements in the expandables industry.

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