Create “Safety Shield” for Deep Well Drilling

In recent three months, there has been good news about onshore drilling in China. Following PeroChina's announcement at the end of June that it had drilled 9,010 meters of China’s deepest onshore gas horizontal well in the Southwest Oil and Gas Field, Sinopec announced that the deepest “Shendi No.1” directional well in the Tarim Basin reached 9,300m in early August, breaking the Asian record. Behind these records, the high-end BOPs of Rongsheng Machinery Manufacture Ltd. of Huabei Oilfield, Hebei have played an important role in safety assurance.

As of September 20, the high-end BOPs of Rongsheng Machinery Manufacture Ltd. of Huabei Oilfield, Hebei have been widely used in Xinjiang, Sichuan and other special drilling blocks, providing safety services for 70% of ultra-deep wells above 7,000m in China, and becoming the “first shield” for onshore drilling safety in China.

“Product Quality is the Foundation of Our Survival”

The rubber factory laboratory of Rongsheng Machinery Manufacture Ltd. of Huabei Oilfield, Hebei is the busiest, finest and cleanest area in Rongsheng Machinery Manufacture Ltd. of Huabei Oilfield, Hebei . After entering, you will see that the workers are weighing materials.

Hao Xiaoyong, the technical leader of the rubber factory, said that the rubber proportion directly determines the performance and quality of the rubber parts. It must be careful. It should be accurate to be within 1g in the case of weighing dozens of rubber additives. Especially for the rubber parts of some high-end BOPs, after reaching the full standard inspection in the laboratory, each vehicle shall be sampled in multiple parts and directions for secondary recheck and reconfirmation of the weight of the mixed rubber in the back-end process to ensure the performance of rubber parts with more subtle parameter adjustment, and the deviation rate of tensile strength, elastic modulus, high temperature resistance, etc. shall be controlled within 1% of the extreme value.

They previously received the task of matching BOPs for a drilling rig of CNPC Chuanqing Drilling Engineering Co., Ltd. At that time, the target depth of this well was more than 9,000m, which was difficult for ordinary BOPs to adapt to. Therefore, it was necessary to overcome the extreme environmental test of more than 180℃ and formation pressure above 130 MPa.

After receiving the task, the employees at all posts of Rongsheng Machinery Manufacture Ltd. of Huabei Oilfield, Hebei gathered quickly and dared not be careless. They conducted standardized tests on dozens of raw materials again, and used advanced rubber mixing intelligent devices for the proportioning of production processes to ensure accurate weighing of materials and proper operation of processes.

The whole process was tracked by specially assigned technicians to test the physical and mechanical properties of each batch of rubber mixture. After full standard inspection in the laboratory was completed, a second re-inspection was required to control the deviation rate of tensile strength, elastic modulus, high temperature resistance and other properties to be within 1% of the extreme value.

During the vulcanization process, the rubber parts need to be vulcanized at 170 ℃ for more than 5 hours. They adopted two-person vulcanization to ensure that the process is witnessed and the quality process is fully controllable. In addition, they carried out a series of high and low temperature verification tests in strict accordance with the standards, in which the ram rubber core even broke the high temperature limit and reached 205 ℃.

Finally, the 105 MPa BOPs independently developed by Rongsheng Machinery Manufacture Ltd. of Huabei Oilfield, Hebei remained stable in the face of ultra-high pressure formation and bottom hole temperature above 180 ℃, and withstood severe tests in the event of overflow, successfully guaranteeing safe drilling and completion of this 9,010m deepest natural gas well.

“Customer Satisfaction is Our Highest Pursuit”

The “deep ground project” implemented by Sinopec in Shunbei Oilfield has much higher requirements for the quality of BOPs, and many parameters are modified repeatedly due to inexperience in advance, which makes many BOP manufacturers flinch.

The “ultra-deep, ultra-high temperature and ultra-high pressure” of “Shendi No.1” drilling well is another major test for the BOP materials, said Liu Yingji, director of casting and forging plant of Rongsheng Machinery Manufacture Ltd. of Huabei Oilfield, Hebei. In the heat treatment process, the amount of heat convection, the difference in the concentration and temperature of quenching medium, the difference in the chemical composition of the workpiece, as well as the worker operation process will affect the product quality.

They negotiated with the user on formulating countermeasures, adopted the material-holding method of reducing part deformation, redesigned and improved the reasonable tooling, and optimized the heat treatment process parameters by sorting out and analyzing the chemical composition of the workpiece, the temperature compensation difference of the heat treatment equipment, as well as the high performance requirements of the workpiece.

At the casting site, although the workers wear heavy high-temperature protective clothing, they could only operate the equipment by one person in the face of 800℃ high temperature baking, with the other two personnel operating in advance to put the tooling slings to the expected position, so as to ensure the quenching quality of the workpiece and achieve the purpose of improving the product quality. Through reliable manufacturing process and strict factory test, the BOPs operated steadily during the drilling process, thereby ensuring the drilling safety of the deepest well in Asia---- “Shendi No.1” well with a depth of 9,300m.

“Constantly Surpassing is the Direction of Our Efforts”

For a long time, Rongsheng Machinery Manufacture Ltd. of Huabei Oilfield, Hebei has been deeply engaged in the field of oil well control equipment, and has grown into a large petroleum machinery manufacturer with a certain international reputation, a land BOP manufacturer with the largest annual production and sales volume in the world, as well as a single champion enterprise.

In the face of numerous honors and technical advantages, it is a choice question for it to decide whether to “sit on its laurels” or “surpass itself” in the future. Rongsheng staff with lofty ideals are well aware that everything is developing against the current. If they do not advance, they will retreat. Being self-complacent will only be abandoned by the history.

To maintain the lasting and vigorous vitality of the enterprise, Rongsheng Machinery Manufacture Ltd. of Huabei Oilfield, Hebei has synchronized the development of domestic BOPs with the international cutting-edge technology by taking the international leading level as the benchmark. In recent two years, in order to do better in the field of domestic well control equipment manufacturing, their technical teams have been brave in innovation, excellence and self-transcendence. On the basis of constantly polishing high-end high-quality products with the spirit of craftsmanship, they have successively completed the R&D of a wide range of domestic variable diameter ram BOPs of various specifications, and the high temperature resistance of ram rubber cores has exceeded the standard limit, creating a record of high temperature resistance of the rubber cores of domestic ram BOPs.

Meanwhile, a large number of top domestic special technical experts are introduced, and different key research teams for BOP technology upgrading are established. In the past five years, it has obtained national invention patents for 21 key technologies such as “Rebuilding Wellhead Emergency Rescue Device”, firmly holding the core technology in its own hands.

In addition, they set up quality improvement projects every year, and carefully polished the high-quality products of BOP series to constantly exceed themselves. In 2021, the “underwater emergency well sealing device” of Rongsheng Machinery Manufacture Ltd. of Huabei Oilfield, Hebe was successfully tested again in the deep-water area of the South China Sea, making it become the “leader” in the field of well control equipment of China’s offshore oil.