Post by Tex on Apr 15, 2011 20:20:47 GMT -6
I took a tax return to my client at Kilgore's Halliburton office and he offered to give me a tour. I hadn't been through there since the 80s, so I decided to take him up on it.
Kilgore is no ordinary office for Halliburton. There have been quarters when Kilgore generated more than half of the company's profit and in 2010, it became the first office to net over a billion dollars for them. The area is hot and that office has facilities that no one else has.
Each cement job is a custom mix for that well, starting with the temperature and pressure and any special well characteristics such as fluid loss. A sample of cement is mixed and put into one of twenty or so machines in the cement lab, which simulates the well's temperature and pressure. (12,000 psi at 350 degrees is common) A paddle turns in the mixture for a certain number of hours to determine if the mixture will stay workable for a suficient time. The set cement is tested to make sure that it will hold up under the well conditions. Then a big batch is mixed and put through the same tests. Once they are happy with the batch, the cement is loaded into trucks to be pumped into the long string of pipe and back up the outside of the pipe, a round trip of sometimes eight miles.
The frac division and the cement division both are highly computerized now, with technicians running the show from behind computers screens in a truck rather than standing on the back of a pumper flipping valves like the old days.
The frac pumps use diesel engines the size of those used in railroad locomotives, but the controls look like a computer game. It's not your dad's oilfield. I know oilfield land titles fairly well but the technology has left me behind.
Kilgore is no ordinary office for Halliburton. There have been quarters when Kilgore generated more than half of the company's profit and in 2010, it became the first office to net over a billion dollars for them. The area is hot and that office has facilities that no one else has.
Each cement job is a custom mix for that well, starting with the temperature and pressure and any special well characteristics such as fluid loss. A sample of cement is mixed and put into one of twenty or so machines in the cement lab, which simulates the well's temperature and pressure. (12,000 psi at 350 degrees is common) A paddle turns in the mixture for a certain number of hours to determine if the mixture will stay workable for a suficient time. The set cement is tested to make sure that it will hold up under the well conditions. Then a big batch is mixed and put through the same tests. Once they are happy with the batch, the cement is loaded into trucks to be pumped into the long string of pipe and back up the outside of the pipe, a round trip of sometimes eight miles.
The frac division and the cement division both are highly computerized now, with technicians running the show from behind computers screens in a truck rather than standing on the back of a pumper flipping valves like the old days.
The frac pumps use diesel engines the size of those used in railroad locomotives, but the controls look like a computer game. It's not your dad's oilfield. I know oilfield land titles fairly well but the technology has left me behind.
