drill technique

How Confusion on Piling Rig Rules Set the Stage for Fatalities?

The drill industry’s insider minds are under the notion that piling rig rules are likely unsafe. How so? 

If we are going to apply the same rules on safety to bakery mixers like the 32-meter drills that are capable of producing enormous building foundations, you can still get excused for assuming that somewhere along the line there was a discrepancy.  

Generally speaking, the immense rigs are created either by Italian or German firms. They are designed to be in line with the EN791 and EN 99 regulations. But the applied rules here are rather more exacting, and they are also extended with respect to the Supply of Machinery as well as Provision and Use of Work Equipment or PUWER regulations. 

drilling rig

According to the rules, public health and safety shouldn’t be put into compromise. Preventive measures or practical ways to control or mitigate such risks should be in place. In the case of piling rigs, this will translate into safety cut-outs and having set some guard mechanisms. 

The safety guards in enormous drill rigs, which usually have an average weight of 15 tonnes or more, will significantly help in putting a demarcation line to what the auger drill can do and go to. There is a deliberation that is going on right now between the Federation of Piling Specialists or FPS and the HSE. The goal of which is to ditch out a solution involving how the guards are going to be designed with the manufacturers. 

But the HSE tends to assert the guards intended for drill rigs that weigh below 15 tonnes. This is carrying the risk of destabilizing them. They have the potential to render the machines more unsafe than already are and the HSE is deliberately not paying any heed to that. Needless to say, it is creating an added safety hazard.    

The piling rig operators with guards commit a good amount of time just to switch augers to reach the depths they require even though this would translate to a reduced amount of productivity.  

Some others think that the guidelines are somehow unworkable and not actionable at all simply because the area in which the HSE wants the safety tripwire installed is not practical for users. The reason behind this is that there is a good chance that the spoil will be hitting the drill string. Thus, cutting out the machine.  

The front of the drill string is usually being wrapped in cages and guards. People will not let these machines in sites since they require this type of cage. In the event of an accident and these machines don’t have them, it runs the risk of bringing along a lot of trouble. 

industrial companies

Modification works that will help meet the set regulations will cost around £14,000 which will also cover the cutting torque and rotary speed. 

UK Soilmec managing director Robin North is befuddled by which machines should come with handrails. He further explains that he needs to know why this applies to a drilling rig but not a practical option to have in an excavator. He wants to know if there are any underlying reasons why they keep on insisting on all this for drilling rigs.  

The HSE said that it penned out a letter to different firms in March last year. They outlined their concerns in that letter indicating various potential risks to drilling equipment operators and made a follow up on this with inspectors looking into actual site standards.  

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What Types of Drill Rigs for Sale Are Available Today?

There are many different kinds of drill rigs for sale in the country. Drilling rigs are basically used as protective structures, and their main purpose is to house important drilling equipment and tools including the derrick, cables, and drill bits. They are essential materials used in the extraction of raw petroleum from underneath the surface of the earth. 

If you will go down to the basics, offshore oil rigs come in several different types. They are designed to work in various locations, different environments, and certain kinds of wells. 

  • As a highly mobile drilling structure that comes with bottom supports, Jackups are equipped with open-truss or columnar legs. The purpose of this is to provide structural support to the hull area or main deck. 
  • Unlike Jackups, platforms are not mobile and thus cannot be moved. One typical feature for platforms is that they are made from cement or steel, and they are highly useful in drilling for new development wells. 
  • The floaters, or sometimes referred to as the semisubmersibles can stay afloat using giant pontoons. Sometimes they are made from hollow columns, instead. They can submerge to a desirable depth when filled with water. A floater type of drill rig is highly reliable in rough seas and most of the time they are being used to drill new wells.  

There are several primary systems from which the vast majority of drilling rigs rely on to get the job done: 

  • A hoisting system. Most of the time, they’d refer to this as drawworks or derrick. 
  • A drive group consisting of chains, motors, and compounds. 
  • A circulating system of kelly, return lines, drill string, pumps, and pits. 
  • Well, control equipment. 

There are various reasons why we need to drill a well. If our purpose for drilling a new well is to find a new reservoir, we call it an exploratory well. We also have development wells, which is most applicable in proven oil fields. Their main purpose in the area is to maximize the production of oil coming from that field.  

The most common and widely used drilling technique we have nowadays is the rotary type of drilling. The working principle behind this method is to force the drill bit down towards the earth, whereby in the process it will make a hole or a wellbore. A drill stem is attached and will rotate the drill bit, and is also providing a passageway where the drilling fluid is circulated. Drilling fluid is mud.  

Below are some important information concerning wells and how they get drilled. So much so that it is not always a “ straight down” action.  

If you will hear of a well that will be drilled the conventional way, it only means to say that the well is going to be drilled vertically, straight down to the oil itself.  

When it comes to traditional drilling, one can’t expect that the process will always yield the best results. Usually, the driller tends to go down vertically, and then go for a horizontal sharp turn. 

For this to work, the use of special drill bits is necessary.  

With the kind of technology and equipment we have these days, together with the available drill rigs for sale in the country, all these together help to bring us a step closer to a very precise directional drilling.  

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