After being on sight for five days I was all prepared to sit down and write about how much I hated the drive back to work OR to write about my screw up this week, with the company storage locker (I somehow lost the lock for it, story for another time) BUT the biggest news of the day trumps all that!
Shortly before I clocked off yesterday morning we had some unusual pressure spikes and then the bit just stopped. Normally that would mean any number of things could be wrong with the BHA (Bottom Hole Assembly, the bit, the mud motor, and the gamma tools) no matter what the problem in almost always means we have to come out of the hole: a trip out.
When they got to the surface they discovered that the bit had sheared itself in about three places. And looked something like this!:
Just for comparison this is what a good one looks like.
THAT’S NOT GOOD!!!! So what happens now you ask? Well! Now that there are pieces of diamond studded titanium tungsten carbide in the bottom of the hole and we can’t drill forward tell those are out of the way we have to mill. That means we bring in a special bit that’s who purpose is to drill thru this stuff. When the special bit get to the bottom it can take a very long time to mill or grind these pieces in to small enough chunks that they can be fished out with a basket (its exactly what you think, a claw type basket goes down and scoops up all the pieces it can) or can be pumped back to surface. No matter what it will be a long night and possibly along few days.
Besides this things have been going well at the new site summer might be in full swing other places but I think it is over for North Dakota. It has been rainy and below 80 for the last few days. We live in a big mud puddle now but with all the fires out west we get great sunsets.
