Figure 4. HH automatic casing handling tool.
The first HH-150 was delivered in Siberia, Russia, in 2010, and was able to handle a temperature of -45˚C. The broadness of the portfolio was expanded with the HH-350, with 350 t of hoisting capacity deployed in Colombia and New Zealand in 2011. In the same year, an HH-102 started performing workover operations in Chile while another 25 HH-75 went to China. In 2012, the first slant HH-75SL started drilling for a major oil company in Australia: it utilised a horizontal pipe handling system at different slanted angles going from 5˚ to 45˚. The same slant concept was applied the following year to an offshore HH-220 in the UK and in Norway for workover operations.
In 2014, several HH-300 rigs with walking systems started drilling in Venezuela. At this point, the HH rigs are highly automated, safe and effective machines that can drill 80% of existing wells, efficiently performing oil and gas and geothermal drilling and workover operations in six continents. The advanced automation, combined with key software features, was another fundamental factor that helped the spread of more than 200 units across the globe. The automation of certain routine drilling operations such as tripping and the automatic pipe handling not only reduced the drilling crew, promoting safer and hands-off procedures, but also led to the latest and current version of the HH rigs and arguably the most important development: fully automatic operations. The first milestone in this regard was reached in 2015: fully automatic tripping operations with an HH-300 (Figure 3) through the new Drillmec Embedded Efficiency Platform (DEEP) and specifically the Drillmec Automatic Tripping System (DATS) software, once more improving safety and performance. The introduction of a more advanced cyber cabin, with more data points and the application of machine learning and AI, made this step possible. The last development is being deployed in 2020: automated casing handling. Once the casing is on the rack, it is automatically moved to the catwalk, which carries it through an opening in the middle of the pipe bins carousel directly to the centre hole, where the connection is also completely automatic and unmanned (Figure 4).
Conclusion The concept of a reliable, small footprint rig package, capable of operating completely automatically through standardised sequences at impressive speed in total safety, has come full circle.
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