Up/Down/Up/Down/Up/Down

Lately I've felt a little like a yo-yo. Or one who operates a yo-yo. A yo-yo-er? Now that I've confused myself I'll attempt to clarify.  Lately I've been doing a lot of BHA lay down/pick ups back to back.  What does that mean? Well...

Okay see the tubes on the right? Drill pipe. Waiting to go
in the hole and make the BHA reach bottom.

The BHA is the bottom hole assembly. It's everything from the drill bit up, from my tools, until basically the start of normal drill pipe. I'll try to keep it simple here. Basically, every time something goes wrong way down at the bottom of the hole with the bit or the motor or one of my tools, in order to look at it or change it out we have to 'trip' out of the well back to surface.  This means removing 30 m (90ft) lengths of drill pipe one at a time until we reach the part we need to change. This 'trip' can take anywhere from 3 hours to as long as 24 hours. So we don't like to do it very often.

Once we get the BHA on surface, we usually change out everything. This is called picking up/laying down BHA depending on what you're doing.  Every time the BHA comes to surface we have to take our tools out, 'dump' the data from the tool memory, then check functionality, make sure the tool will survive another 'run' into the hole and the drilling that goes with that, and then reprogram. Then we 'pick up' the tools again, test them again and trip back in the hole.  All told, this process at it's most efficient takes about 8-10 hours.  And it's completely exhausting. 

Especially with the tools I'm running here.

Imagine 60 ft of 2" metal pipe. Now we're going to put that metal pipe (which weights about 1000 lbs) into a bigger metal pipe to run it. That's basically my tool. Every time we need to see the tool we have to pick it up out of the bigger pipe, then we have to unscrew it at about 40 ft/20ft, lower it from the rig floor to the ground and then carry it around. Unscrew it more to 'talk' to the tool and get at the memory... It's more work than most tools are.

Anyway, what does this have to do with yo-yos?  Good question. Normally we go through this process once or twice. Each time we come to surface we start a new 'run'.  I think the most I've done prior to this at one well is 3 runs in 3 weeks.  Here, we've done five runs. Four of these runs have taken place in the last week.  Basically we've been changing out the tools every 2 days for a week.  I'm completely exhausted and I don't think I've ever been so excited to leave a rig! All we've done since we've been here is go up and down and up and down... yo-yo! Get it?

This job is special for another reason besides the yo-yo factor. My promotion is dependent on how I perform on this job.  Basically it's a two week long evaluation of whether or not I'm competent to do this all by myself. I've made some mistakes for sure (none of them fatal or huge) and I've learned more since I've been here. It's been a good challenge and I do believe I'm ready to do this job on my own.  Plus I'm now a pro at picking-up/laying-down tools! 

Luckily after this I start some vacation time. I'm flying to Houston tomorrow for a class, then to Denver for the weekend for a wedding, and then up to Alaska for some summer adventures. I'm excited to see friends and family and can't wait to do some fishing and camping!