Enhanced Drilling

Drilling into pressure management

DRILLING I PROFILE tech

Specialist drilling technology and service provider Enhanced Drilling offers unique and robust drilling technology and services to the offshore oil and gas industry. It serves all parts of the well – from cuttings transport on the seabed or back to the drilling vessel, to pressure management during drilling and completions. Richard Hagan met with CEO Kjetil Lunde to find out how the company’s systems and solutions are redefining pressure management whilst drilling.

Inside oil & gas

Since its establishment in 1987 outside Bergen, Norway, Enhanced Drilling has delivered over 1,000 wells globally in all major basins and with most of the world’s major oilfield operators, ranging from super majors and national oil companies to independent operators.

Today, thanks to Enhanced Drilling’s range of revolutionary drilling support systems, the company’s client base has diversified outside of its traditional customer base of oilfield operators, to include drilling contractors now also.

Taking MPD to new heights and lows

Enhanced Drilling offers several high-tech, ground-breaking technologies that have repeatedly proven their value in every basin and in all conditions worldwide.

One of these is Enhanced Drilling’s EC-Drill ® system. EC-Drill ® is a Managed Pressure Drilling (MPD) service that uses the controlled mud level technique. The heart of this system is a subsea pump module connected to the riser, and a sophisticated control system topside which also monitors and adjusts the riser pressure.

By adjusting the fluid column in the riser, EC-Drill ® is able to control pressure in the well in real time, on the fly. “Our pumps are able to rapidly manipulate the pressure in the well,” said CEO Kjetil Lunde. “If any issues are picked up topside on the rig, the operator can quickly change the pressure generated by the fluid in the well. It allows you to drill very difficult wells with narrow pressure margins. That in turn allows for more efficient, quicker drilling. It’s also a huge safety bonus.”

“We have now combined the system with a riser closure device, giving us the ability to add pressure to the well,” Mr Lunde added. “It can be applied to all sections post Blow Out Preventer (BOP). So, given that we are manipulating the pressure by adjusting the fluid column in the riser, it means that the deeper the well, the more pressure we can manage.”

As a brand-new system, Enhanced Drilling is now able to offer a closed riser system combining the two MPD methods; Controlled Mud Level and Surface Back Pressure, adding the best of both methods into a single system.

Rising to the occasion

Another technology offered by Enhanced Drilling is its Riserless Mud Recovery. Based on the same technology as EC-Drill ® , this system is utilised during top hole drilling before the BOP and riser are installed. The system consists of a subsea pump module placed on the seabed close to the top hole, and a suction module placed o n the well. These are linked to a power and control unit topside from which the system is controlled.

The Riserless Mud Recovery system allows the drilling operator to drill using engineered fluid. “It offers the operator

very unique well volume control capabilities that they usually don’t have access to during top hole drilling,” Mr Lunde noted. “If, for example, there are shallow hazards or difficult areas in the first phase of the well, this is a great product that gives them more control over that drilling process and avoids unwanted incidents.

“More importantly, this is a recycling system,” he continued. “With our pump we’re able to return all the mud that oth erwise would have been dumped onto the seabed back to the rig so that it can be recycled. This has a very positive impact on seabed conservation.”

“We have successfully used this system in highly environmentally sensitive areas of the world, such as reefs and fish spawning locations, where there are important subsea features that can otherwise be harmed. Avoiding what we call ‘pump and

dump’ is something the industry should be aiming for, and the technology for that is now here. At Enhanced Drilling we take pride in providing a more sustainable way of drilling.”

Going global

Enhanced Drilling is headquartered in its birthplace outside Bergen, in western Norway. There, the company owns 3,000sqm of workshop area and 800sqm of warehouse area, in addition to a 9,000sqm

yard and 2,600sqm of office space. This large facility, operated by 93 staff members, enables the company to comprehensively service its operations globally.

More recently, Enhanced Drilling opened its first facility in Houston, Texas. Its ‘Houston Technical and Training Centre’ employs 34 people and incorporates a 900sqm workshop and warehouse and 200sqm of office space. This modern new facility will ensure that Enhanced Drilling can properly service its growing presence in the Gulf of Mexico.

“We see a large demand for our technology increasing globally. We won a major contract in Houston in 2019 and by 2023 we were deploying on our second rig with a contract already in hand for a third, so we’re enjoying rapid growth in the Gulf,” said Mr Lunde. “We believe the Americas will be one of our most important operational areas going forward.”

Enhanced Drilling also has an operational hub in Perth, Australia, with seven permanent staff members serving both the Australian and Southeast Asian markets.

See Enhanced Drilling live

In October 2023, Enhanced Drilling will attend the IADC MPD conference in Denver, where they will present three papers dedicated to its operations and groundbreaking technology. “We expect our papers to be interesting to the operators and drilling community because this is the first time that anyone has done what we’re doing with an MPD system,” Mr Lunde revealed.

Enhanced Drilling will also be presenting EC-Monitor™, a novel continuous flow checking system, at the IADC Advanced Rig Technology Conference in Amsterdam.

Concluding, the CEO reflected on an award that Enhanced Drilling recently

earned: “In 2022, we received the award for Best Well Integrity Technology at the World Oil Awards. Achieving this award, from amongst the high-quality entries we were competing with, is a testament to the capabilities of our organisation. It reiterates the value of our 35-year focus on innovation backed by our extensive intellectual property catalogue.”

“We never simply deliver what other companies deliver. This philosophy has led to the in-house development of these wonderful systems, and we certainly look forward to introducing our technology to even more operators in the years to come.”