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A drilling rig is an integrated system that drills wells, such as oil or water wells, or holes for
piling A deep foundation is a type of foundation that transfers building loads to the earth farther down from the surface than a shallow foundation does to a subsurface layer or a range of depths. A pile or piling is a vertical structural element ...
and other construction purposes, into the earth's subsurface. Drilling rigs can be massive structures housing equipment used to drill
water wells A well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, or drilling to access liquid resources, usually water. The oldest and most common kind of well is a water well, to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The ...
,
oil well An oil well is a drillhole boring in Earth that is designed to bring petroleum oil hydrocarbons to the surface. Usually some natural gas is released as associated petroleum gas along with the oil. A well that is designed to produce only gas may ...
s, or natural gas extraction wells, or they can be small enough to be moved manually by one person and such are called
auger Auger may refer to: Engineering * Wood auger, a drill for making holes in wood (or in the ground) ** Auger bit, a drill bit * Auger conveyor, a device for moving material by means of a rotating helical flighting * Auger (platform), the world's f ...
s. Drilling rigs can sample subsurface mineral deposits, test rock, soil and groundwater physical properties, and also can be used to install sub-surface fabrications, such as underground utilities, instrumentation, tunnels or wells. Drilling rigs can be mobile equipment mounted on trucks, tracks or trailers, or more permanent land or marine-based structures (such as
oil platform An oil platform (or oil rig, offshore platform, oil production platform, and similar terms) is a large structure with facilities to extract and process petroleum and natural gas that lie in rock formations beneath the seabed. Many oil platfor ...
s, commonly called 'offshore oil rigs' even if they don't contain a drilling rig). The term "rig" therefore generally refers to the complex equipment that is used to penetrate the surface of the Earth's crust. Small to medium-sized drilling rigs are mobile, such as those used in mineral exploration drilling, blast-hole, water wells and environmental investigations. Larger rigs are capable of drilling through thousands of metres of the
Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...
's crust, using large "
mud pump A mud pump (sometimes referred to as a mud drilling pump or drilling mud pump), is a reciprocating piston/plunger pump designed to circulate drilling fluid under high pressure (up to ) down the drill string and back up the annulus. A mud pump is an ...
s" to circulate
drilling mud In geotechnical engineering, drilling fluid, also called drilling mud, is used to aid the drilling of boreholes into the earth. Often used while drilling oil and natural gas wells and on exploration drilling rigs, drilling fluids are also us ...
(slurry) through the
drill bit Drill bits are cutting tools used in a drill to remove material to create holes, almost always of circular cross-section. Drill bits come in many sizes and shapes and can create different kinds of holes in many different materials. In order ...
and up the casing
annulus Annulus (or anulus) or annular indicates a ring- or donut-shaped area or structure. It may refer to: Human anatomy * ''Anulus fibrosus disci intervertebralis'', spinal structure * Annulus of Zinn, a.k.a. annular tendon or ''anulus tendineus com ...
, for cooling and removing the "cuttings" while a well is drilled. Hoists in the rig can lift hundreds of
ton Ton is the name of any one of several units of measure. It has a long history and has acquired several meanings and uses. Mainly it describes units of weight. Confusion can arise because ''ton'' can mean * the long ton, which is 2,240 pounds ...
s of
pipe Pipe(s), PIPE(S) or piping may refer to: Objects * Pipe (fluid conveyance), a hollow cylinder following certain dimension rules ** Piping, the use of pipes in industry * Smoking pipe ** Tobacco pipe * Half-pipe and quarter pipe, semi-circula ...
. Other equipment can force
acid In computer science, ACID ( atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability) is a set of properties of database transactions intended to guarantee data validity despite errors, power failures, and other mishaps. In the context of databases, a sequ ...
or sand into reservoirs to facilitate extraction of the oil or natural gas; and in remote locations there can be permanent living accommodation and catering for crews (which may be more than a hundred). Marine rigs may operate thousands of miles distant from the supply base with infrequent crew rotation or cycle.


History

Until
internal combustion engine An internal combustion engine (ICE or IC engine) is a heat engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer (usually air) in a combustion chamber that is an integral part of the working fluid flow circuit. In an internal combus ...
s were developed in the late 19th century, the main method for drilling rock was muscle power of man or animal. The technique of oil drilling through
percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...
or
rotary drilling A drill is a tool used for making round holes or driving fasteners. It is fitted with a bit, either a drill or driverchuck. Hand-operated types are dramatically decreasing in popularity and cordless battery-powered ones proliferating due to i ...
has its origins dating back to the ancient Chinese Han Dynasty in 100 BC, where percussion drilling was used to extract natural gas in the Sichuan province. Early oil and gas drilling methods were seemingly primitive as it required several technical skills. The skills involved the availability of heavy iron bits and long bamboo poles, the manufacturing of long and sturdy cables woven from bamboo fiber, and levers. Heavy iron bits were attached to long bamboo cables suspended from bamboo derricks and then were repeatedly raised and dropped into a manually dug hole by having two to six men jumping on a lever. Han dynasty oil wells made by percussion drilling was effective but only reached 10 meters deep and 100 meters by the 10th century. By the 16th century, the Chinese were exploring and drilling oil wells more than deep. Chinese well drilling technology was introduced to Europe in 1828. A modernized variant of the ancient Chinese drilling technique was used by American businessman
Edwin Drake Edwin Laurentine Drake (March 29, 1819 – November 9, 1880), also known as Colonel Drake, was an American businessman and the first American to successfully drill for oil. Early life Edwin Drake was born in Greenville, New York on March 2 ...
to drill Pennsylvania's first oil well in 1859 using small steam engines to power the drilling process rather than by human muscle. Cable tool drilling was developed in ancient China and was used for drilling brine wells. The salt domes also held natural gas, which some wells produced and which was used for evaporation of the brine. Drake learned of cable tool drilling from Chinese laborers in the U. S. The first primary product was kerosene for lamps and heaters. Similar developments around
Baku Baku (, ; az, Bakı ) is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. Baku is located below sea level, which makes it the lowest lying national capital in the world a ...
fed the European market. In the 1970s, outside of the oil and gas industry, roller bits using mud circulation were replaced by the first pneumatic reciprocating piston Reverse Circulation (RC) drills, and became essentially obsolete for most shallow drilling, and are now only used in certain situations where rocks preclude other methods. RC drilling proved much faster and more efficient, and continues to improve with better metallurgy, deriving harder, more durable bits, and compressors delivering higher air pressures at higher volumes, enabling deeper and faster penetration. Diamond drilling has remained essentially unchanged since its inception.


Petroleum drilling industry

Oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) & lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturated ...
and
natural gas Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbo ...
drilling rigs are used not only to identify geologic reservoirs, but also used to create holes that allow the extraction of oil or natural gas from those reservoirs. Primarily in onshore oil and gas fields once a well has been drilled, the drilling rig will be moved off of the well and a service rig (a smaller rig) that is purpose-built for completions will be moved on to the well to get the well on line. This frees up the drilling rig to drill another hole and streamlines the operation as well as allowing for specialization of certain services, i.e. completions vs. drilling.


Mining drilling industry

Mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic via ...
drilling rigs are used for two main purposes, exploration drilling which aims to identify the location and quality of a mineral, and production drilling, used in the production-cycle for mining. Drilling rigs used for
rock blasting Drilling and blasting is the controlled use of explosives and other methods, such as gas pressure blasting pyrotechnics, to break rock for excavation. It is practiced most often in mining, quarrying and civil engineering such as dam, tunnel o ...
for surface mines vary in size dependent on the size of the hole desired, and is typically classified into smaller pre-split and larger production holes.
Underground mining (hard rock) Underground hard-rock mining refers to various underground mining techniques used to excavate "hard" minerals, usually those containing metals, such as ore containing gold, silver, iron, copper, zinc, nickel, tin, and lead. It also involves the ...
uses a variety of drill rigs dependent on the desired purpose, such as production, bolting, cabling, and tunnelling.


Mobile drilling rigs

In early oil exploration, drilling rigs were semi-permanent in nature and the derricks were often built on site and left in place after the completion of the well. In more recent times drilling rigs are expensive custom-built machines that can be moved from well to well. Some light duty drilling rigs are like a mobile crane and are more usually used to drill water wells. Larger land rigs must be broken apart into sections and loads to move to a new place, a process which can often take weeks. Small mobile drilling rigs are also used to drill or bore
piles Hemorrhoids (or haemorrhoids), also known as piles, are vascular structures in the anal canal. In their normal state, they are cushions that help with stool control. They become a disease when swollen or inflamed; the unqualified term ''hemo ...
. Rigs can range from
continuous flight auger A deep foundation is a type of foundation (architecture), foundation that transfers building loads to the earth farther down from the surface than a shallow foundation does to a subsurface layer or a range of depths. A pile or piling is a ...
(CFA) rigs to small air powered rigs used to drill holes in quarries, etc. These rigs use the same technology and equipment as the oil drilling rigs, just on a smaller scale. The drilling mechanisms outlined below differ mechanically in terms of the machinery used, but also in terms of the method by which drill cuttings are removed from the cutting face of the drill and returned to surface.


Automated drill rig

An automated drill rig (ADR) is an automated full-sized walking land-based drill rig that drills long lateral sections in horizontal wells for the oil and gas industry. ADRs are agile rigs that can move from pad to pad to new well sites faster than other full-sized drilling rigs. Each rig costs about $25 million. ADR is used extensively in the Athabasca oil sands. According to the "Oil Patch Daily News", "Each rig will generate 50,000 man-hours of work during the construction phase and upon completion, each operating rig will directly and indirectly employ more than 100 workers." Compared to conventional drilling rigs", Ensign, an international oilfield services contractor based in Calgary, Alberta, that makes ADRs claims that they are "safer to operate, have "enhanced controls intelligence," "reduced environmental footprint, quick mobility and advanced communications between field and office." In June 2005 the first specifically designed slant automated drilling rig (ADR), Ensign Rig No. 118, for
steam assisted gravity drainage Steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD; "Sag-D") is an enhanced oil recovery technology for producing heavy crude oil and bitumen. It is an advanced form of steam stimulation in which a pair of horizontal wells is drilled into the oil reservoir, ...
(SAGD) applications was mobilized by Deer Creek Energy Limited, a Calgary-based oilsands company.


Auger drills


Drill buckets

A drill bucket, or auger bucket, is a drilling head that accumulates spoil inside and can be lifted from the hole periodically to be emptied.


See also

* * * * * * * * * * * *


References


External links


OSHA guide for drilling rigs
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