Track: Operations Management

Abstract

Drilling is an industry where everyone knows that time is money. One of the technologies adopted is drilling using top drive drilling rig system as compared to the rotary table drilling rig system. The aim of this paper is to compare between the two techniques in terms of connection time during the drilling processes. However, it is well known that a top drive system allows rotating full stand and thereby connections are reduced by 2/3 of the number of connections required by a rotary table system. There are however, a time saving with reduced number of connections. On the other hand, the top drive rigs come with higher daily rent cost comparing with the rotary table rigs. This case study considered thirteen wells drilled in three different Libyan oilfields. Seven wells was drilled using rotary table system and the remainder wells were drilled through the top drive system. The results show that top drive system is superior in terms of total connection time and drilling cost in areas where the wells’ depth greater than 11500 ft. Conversely, the rotary table system yielded a lower connection time and drilling cost in 6000 ft or less.