Petroleum Directory: Baker installs breakthrough tool system on North Slope

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Baker Oil Tools has completed the world’s first successful installation of an innovative new drilling system, using it in the challenging conditions on Alaska’s North Slope.

The new rotating, self-aligning multilateral (RAM) system allows operators to continuously rotate liners and screens into extended-reach lateral bores while simultaneously landing multilateral junctions.

In the Alaska situation, “extended-reach multilateral wells are necessary to ensure maximum contact with trapped oil pools. The RAM System enables operators to efficiently construct long, horizontal multilaterals,” said Alex Ortiz, wellbore construction manager for Baker Oil Tools. “The RAM system is an evolutionary tool based on our HOOK Hanger and FORMation Junction technologies.”

The operator on this well found that improving recovery from the sand horizon just below the permafrost at around 3,000 feet depth required extended-reach multilaterals with horizontal departures of more than 5:1 ratios and liner lengths of more than 8,000 feet. Baker didn’t identify the operator.

Continuous rotation was needed to get the drill pipe and liner to total lateral depth in these long horizontal sections. The RAM system was used to land two multilateral junctions and simultaneously rotate liners to bottom.

Liner length of the upper lateral was 8,689 feet and total depth was 17,035 feet, at 3,212 feet total vertical depth.

It was the world’s first successful RAM multilateral system. Expanding the use of this system could provide an economical option for developing the large viscous oil reserves in Alaska, according to Baker Oil Tools, a division of Baker Hughes Inc.

More information on the company and its drilling technologies is available at www.bakeroiltools.com