The conversation about casing running is growing into one that shifts the focus from making connections at the rotary to life-of-field, total-depth well integrity. Inspiring this "deeper" conversation is a new way of thinking about old challenges that combines traditional services with relevant new technologies.

When top drive casing running systems were introduced in the 1990s, the focus was on a rig floor competency – making connections at the rotary. Acceptance and applicability of the technology expanded as drilling equipment and connections evolved to withstand the demands of various formation strengths and geology. Yet the focus remained on the rig floor.

During the early 2000s, the push for wellbore architecture that could replace traditional telescoping wells with large-bore hydrocarbon conduits from surface to the producing formation spawned significant technology developments, such as Weatherford's drilling-with-casing (DwC) and drilling-with-liner systems. These systems enable casing to be run, set, and cemented in a single trip. They accelerate well construction, reduce cost and risk, and make it possible to successfully drill through trouble zones where problems such as lost circulation zones, pressure transitions, and unstable formations can have a negative impact on overall success.

The OverDrive casing running and drilling system became the company's catalyst to take a new approach to tubular running services. Tubular running specialists saw the capability of the system to simultaneously rotate, circulate, and push casing strings as an excellent way to improve traditional tubular running operations. Yet those capabilities had further implications, and a longer and closer look presented an opportunity to apply a strategy that could add value to clients' operations while creating a new growth market for the upstream oil and gas industry.

The capabilities that the casing running and drilling system brought to DwC operations required downhole engineering requirements outside the scope of traditional rig-floor competencies. For example, rotating and pushing casing introduced torque and drag, cyclic fatiguing, bending, and compressive loading that require complex analyses. To fully integrate the new capabilities into the existing offering would require multi-discipline expertise and understanding. Equally apparent was that the resulting competency and a broad portfolio of enabling technologies could add real client value by widening the perspective from traditional tubular running to a total depth solution more closely aligned with operators' overall wellbore objectives. Instead of focusing on making connections at the rotary, the focus would shift to bringing high-integrity casing strings with the planned diameter to total depth and securing the well-bore over the life of the well.

A dedicated, multi-discipline well engineering and optimization approach was formed to help develop this new total depth competency. The total depth specialists understand the entire well construction process and how the associated technologies work together.

In the brief time since the new total depth well construction offering was launched, the service company-client conversation has begun much earlier in the field development process and has focused on a preemptive, engineered approach that delivers a secure wellbore over the life of the well. Early case histories from throughout the world are impressive, from pushing casing to total depth in a record-length extended-reach well offshore California to economically constructing multiple wells from a single site in Uganda to successfully casing and cementing multiple strings in previously problematic wells in the Caspian Sea.

It will be interesting to see where the conversation goes next.