Nick Rashid

Soon after finishing my geoscience degree at the UW-Madison, I headed down to OK to start my career in the oil and gas industry as a Field Geologist for Chesapeake Energy. As a FG my principal duty was to facilitate maximum target zone penetration by keeping everyone informed of what formations we were drilling through. To do this I aggregated data from sample cuttings and downhole data to determine formation tops and relayed that information to the drilling crew to be sure the well was landed at the correct depth and stayed in the target zone.

One year and 40 miles of wellbore later, my position shifted during Seventy Seven Energy’s spin off from Chesapeake. Less tied to geology but more directly involved with the drilling process, my position as an Instrumentation Specialist concerns the Where and What of drilling – Where the drill bit is and What we’re drilling through. Using information taken from downhole, we can determine where in 3-D space our drill bit is, as well as provide an analogue for lithology.

As the industry continues to adjust to lower oil prices, pressure has been mounting to increase efficiency. For me this has translated to a departure from the traditional source of downhole data transmission – mud pulse telemetry– slightly akin to sending data via Morse code, to utilizing an electromagnetic telemetry tool. This tool encodes data onto low frequency EM waves which are decoded on the surface into the various streams of data used in the drilling process. EM telemetry allows us to transmit data nearly 10 times faster than other systems, which puts us much closer to obtaining “real time” downhole data. With this constant broadcast of data, we can work better with geology and engineering staff and make faster drilling decisions– a necessary improvement when drilling outside the target zone can be a multimillion dollar mistake.

Utilizing this new tech has been a challenging yet rewarding experience. Combining principles of wave physics with the resistive properties of “the overburden” has led to a resurgent interest in physics, while learning to communicate with both scientists and laymen about this relatively new tech has been an interesting challenge. While the decline in oil prices is perceived as a downside by the industry, the silver lining is that this enhanced system of efficiency and knowledge is everlasting.

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