Bill Eustes, associate professor of petroleum engineering at Colorado School of Mines, was recently interviewed by InnovOil about "super-spec rigs," the super-sized oil and gas rigs that are growing in popularity at U.S. unconventional plays.
From the article:
Despite their eye-popping specs, these rigs are not actually the result of a step-change in drilling equipment or in the application of the technology, according to Colorado School of Mines associate professor of petroleum engineering Bill Eustes. Instead, they are the result of the gradual evolution that is always taking place in the equipment for the industry - albeit an evolution that has become more pressing as low prices have forced operators to become more efficient.
"Every new rig has a new wrinkle," says Eustes. "It's everything you can do to make time irrelevant. Speed! Speed! Speed!" he said of the latest trends in rig equipment, speaking with InnovOil via phone from his truck as he travelled en route to the school's experimental mine near Idaho Springs. "It's also a question of safety - so that fingers, arms, heads and legs are not in danger."