An Operation Support Center (OSC) was established in Colorado, USA to support clients drilling in the Pinedale Anticline in Wyoming as well as other operators throughout the onshore drilling market of the continental US. In the Pinedale Anticline region, operators plan to drill several hundred wells per year. The time to drill and complete a typical well stood at thirty-five days through 2007, and a target was set to reduce this to fifteen days. Achieving this target would result in a savings of approximately 2190 combined rig days a year thus saving the operator over $100mm.A strategy with 2 main elements was developed: a powered rotary steerable service for vertical drilling and remote optimization via the OSC. This approach allowed for no rotary steerable operations personnel to be based at the wellsite during drilling. The new OSC centric processes and procedures developed increased efficiency and allowed fast deployment across a fleet of rigs. The process included a rig-up crew that moved from rig to rig for BHA pick up or lay down.The remote operations team then monitored operations and began analysis to optimize performance. Using offset data and meanspecific-energy (MSE) techniques, drilling performance targets were set for each depth interval. OSC based drilling engineers alerted the rig when penetration rates were compromised by adverse drilling dynamics, or when input energy needed to be reduced to preserve bit life and minimize trips. The remote team also generated a daily report for each well that continuously compared penetration rates with expected performance targets and captured best practices. This process was used to communicate across the entire drilling organization.This method of challenging the target was complimented by the operator's ongoing optimization initiatives and resulted in an increased average ROP of 36% through February 2009. Average time to drill and complete these wells was substantially reduced from the original benchmark; with average drilling and completion time standing at seventeen days. This reduction in days has the potential of saving the operator an average of $900k per well.

This paper discusses the design, construction, and Initial application of a structure for supporting a coiled tubing injector head, bottom hole drilling assembly and pressurized lubricator. The paper includes a discussion of the features desired for the structure and how these were addressed during the design. The manufacturing of the support tower and its support platform are then discussed. On site assembly procedures for the movable structure are presented along with photographs of the deployed rig in service. The versatility and usefulness of the structure are discussed from the end users point of view. Introduction In early 1994, during planning for an effort to explore using coiled tubing for drilling operations, the engineers working on the development realized that a structure would be needed to support the weight of the drilling equipment. The objective of the drilling operation was to enter existing wells through the swab valve on the top of the Christmas tree and, while under pressure and blowout prevent (BOP) control, drill laterals into new pay zones. Hence, the BOP was to be mounted on top of the Christmas tree along with a lubricator long enough to contain the entire bottom hole assembly (BHA) and strong enough to contain well pressure. The coiled tubing injector head and pack off would need to be mounted on the upper end of the lubricator. The mechanics of this operation requires that long and heavy pieces of equipment would have to be held vertically over the well with the coiled tubing injector head located at the very top of the equipment stack. It was recognized that a unique and portable structure was needed to hold the coiled tubing drilling equipment. Thus, CAMCO, with the agreement of British Petroleum, a major partner in the drilling project, began a program to design and construct a support tower and a platform on which to locate the tower. This paper is a report on the various phases of the design, construction, and deployment of the drilling structure (DS). Design Requirements The primary purpose of the DS is to prevent bending moments and undue compressive loads from being transmitted to the wellhead while permitting the entire BHA to be lubricated above the wellhead and BOP's. This required that the tower had to be rigid enough to prevent the injector head from moving relative to the wellhead, even under the loads imposed by the down hole coiled tubing weight and the side pull of the coiled tubing reel. Further, the compressive loads from all downward forces had to be eliminated from the long lubricator to prevent buckling. The meant that the downward and overturning forces had to be carried through the tower, into a platform, then via platform supports, to the ground.