Daniel Ortuño pulled a small piece of Texas history from a shelf in a building at the University of Texas at Austin. The yellowing piece of paper said that on Dec. 19, 1951, John L. Boyd began drilling a 1,350-foot-deep oil well through 17 layers of shale and limestone in Crockett County in southwest Texas.
I think a lot about training and thought about it again as I read freelancer Aaron Foley’s article this month (page 32) on a gas well simulator at the Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport, Pa.
Pneumatic hammer drilling gives drillers an advantage in all but the most extreme soft ground conditions says Josh Marcus, senior product specialist of Atlas Copco Secoroc down-hole tools. And when weighted drilling fluid is not required to control the formations, hammer drilling should be the favored technique.
Another winter has pretty much passed in the Williston basin, and I am glad of it. We didn’t have much snow this winter, which made for better road conditions, but the temperature and wind chills set records.