American Oil and Gas Reporter - November 2018 - 100

SpecialReport: A&D and Startups
tomer service.
"One of the biggest challenges facing
directional companies is access to dependable mud motors," Burrows says.
"To control costs during the downturn,
companies depleted their fleets. While
the industry has recovered, many companies have found that it is easier and
more cost-effective to use third parties to
manage logistics, maintenance and delivery
of mud motors versus investing capital
to grow their fleets in house. The thirdparty providers also can be flexible in
delivering new bottom-hole assemblies,
which are continually changing."
When it formed, Vicon had a small
fleet of motors. Within the past six months,
Burrows says it has expanded by 500
percent. He attributes this growth to a
focus on customer service, a quality product, and manufacturing partners with the
capacity and commitment to increase
production as needed.
"We have grown every month because
of our relationships and approach to service," he says. "Our team is passionate
about delivering the product when we
say we are going to deliver it."
As a small company, Burrows says
Vicon is flexible and easy to communicate
with. "We partner with our customers
and do what we can to ensure their success," he adds. "For example, when one
of our customers wanted to make a unique
change to a BHA that would normally
have required an eight- to 10-week lead
time, we worked with our manufacturer

to get it done in 10 days."
Because of its lean structure and strong
partnerships, Vicon often can provide
motors at lower costs, Burrows reports.
He adds that the company follows a rigorous inspection program. "We have a
great asset management system that tracks
the life of every part, and a rigorous
quality assurance and control program
that includes inspections with state-ofthe-art equipment to provide tight tolerances and minimize downhole failures,"
he describes. "In many cases, we service
the motors on a more regular basis,
because we know how much a failure
would cost our clients and damage our
reputation."
With multiple service and manufacturing
locations throughout the United States and
Canada, Burrows says Vicon generally
delivers motors to Texas, New Mexico,
Oklahoma and Louisiana in less than a
day and can reach most areas of the United
States within two. "We are expanding our
capabilities and locations in both conventional and unconventional plays as demand
continues to grow," he says.
Onshore RSS
Rotary steerable systems have tremendous potential to improve economics in
unconventional plays, says George Sutherland, co-founder, president and chief operating officer of Kinetic Upstream Technologies. "By eliminating the need to
slide, rotary steering improves rates of
penetration. It also delivers smoother

By providing a rotary steerable system with a low part count and a maintenance-friendly
design, Kinetic Upstream Technologies says it aims to reduce the cost associated with
using rotary steering in unconventional plays. The company adds that the RSS beneﬁts
from advances in automation that should help it deliver smoother, more productive
laterals.

100 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

wellbores that are easier to complete and
capable of yielding more production over
the life of the well," he explains.
As laterals continue to lengthen, those
benefits are becoming more significant.
With that in mind, Sutherland relates,
he co-founded Kinetic Upstream with
chief executive officer Jeff Lasater to
refine an RSS with the affordability and
durability needed for onshore plays. The
two industry veterans are building on
the success they achieved in 1997, when
they developed one of the first rotary
steerable systems.
"Off shore, where the rigs are bigger,
the flow rates are higher and the drilling
mud is cleaner, these systems command
virtually 100 percent of the market," he
observes. "While the use of RSS on U.S.
land has grown from 5 percent to just
over 20 percent during the past five
years, reliability and cost concerns continue to hinder growth. To address those
concerns, we have designed a system
that has a low part count and can be
serviced in the field."
Sutherland points out that the system's
reliability should reduce the number of
units needed in the supply chain, lowering costs.
"For field serviceability, the mandrel
rotates on mud-lubricated bearings, much
like the ones used in mud motors, rather
than oil-lubricated bearings that must be
in a sealed environment," he says. "Also,
we put the electronics in barrels outside
the housing, meaning batteries or boards
can be replaced without having to access
the tool's internals."
The work that cannot be done on site
usually can be performed by a nearby
mud motor shop, Sutherland reports, noting this is less expensive than shipping
the RSS to centralized pristine facilities.
"Kinetic's automated steering system
is designed to drill the vertical section,
the curve and the lateral with one BHA,"
Sutherland adds. "It can do that because
its dogleg deflection mechanism is proportional, meaning it can be moved from
0 to 100 percent or anywhere in between.
This lets us steer straight through the
vertical section, build at the desired rate
in the curve, and go back to drilling
straight in the horizontal section."
The system goes beyond cruise control-like hold-azimuth settings, Sutherland
says. "We are finding ways to get the
tool the information it needs to make decisions on its own, which can help drill a
smoother wellbore and stay in the sweet

American Oil and Gas Reporter - November 2018

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