Churchill Drilling Tools confirmed the successful deployment of its mechanical extrusion (MX™) and SMART DART™ systems in drill-string pressure testing.

According to Churchill, the MX™ system allows the use of rigid SMART DARTS™ for multi-cycle control and exploits their robustness and resilience to high-pressure, high-temperature environments to deliver greater speed, reliability and performance than with conventional ball activation.

The system was first successfully deployed in Norway by a major pipe manufacturer in 2011 with shearing accuracy results of 99.6%. As a result of this success, a full program of further drill-string development applications has been scheduled using the system. The system is also being used in the UK continental shelf for leak detection in operational drill-strings, in pre-emptive integrity tests prior to ultra-critical high-pressure phases.

Churchill’s director, Mike Churchill, said, “With the strong performance record of the MX™ darts in bypass applications and the simplicity of adapting them to others, we were confident we could provide a reliable solution for our customers very quickly. With no pre-configuration required, the PTS MX™ has shown itself to be an unobtrusive, accurate and flexible testing system that can be deployed quickly and easily, and it is a further illustration of the power and capability of MX™ darts to control downhole operations precisely.”