September 12, 2013


TenarisHydril premium connections allow Petrom to execute an unprecented casing drilling operation in terms of depth and diameter.

OMV Petrom, the largest oil and gas producer in southeastern Europe, recently set a world record for the diameter and depth of a column drilled using casing drilling. The 4545 Totea well, located in the Totea Deep field, was drilled with a 20-inch casing with TenarisHydril ER™ connections. This world record was certified by Odfjell Well Services, a privately owned international drilling, well service and engineering company with 40 years of experience in worldwide operations. This represents the first phase of drilling at the Totea 4545 well, which has a total estimated depth of around 3,500 meters.

"These exceptional achievements … set new benchmarks in operational excellence. Given that 2/3 of our production comes from fields that have been producing for around 50 years, the latest technologies and adequate expertise are needed to continue to supply oil and gas in Romania," said Mariana Gheorghe, OMV Petrom CEO in a corporate statement.

OMV Petrom began using the casing drilling technique in 2012 and has since used it successfully in 17 projects. Casing drilling consists of combining the drilling and casing of one section of a well into a single operation. Casing drilling reduces operational costs, drilling time and number of incidents caused by stuck pipes.

The use of superior quality casing and premium connections in such applications is essential, as the column has to withstand higher stress than in a classic running operation. Tenaris's products used in the construction of the Totea 4545 well included more than 10,000 meters of casing, with diameters ranging from 4 ½" to 20" , in steel grades including the proprietary TN110HS, and TenarisHydril Blue® Series, Wedge Series 500™ and ER™ connections, produced at Tenaris's mills in Italy, Japan, and Romania.

In addition to quality products, Tenaris offered technical expertise to the customer. "We shared Tenaris's experience with casing drilling applications with the Petrom drilling team, as well as references about similar processes with other customers," said Zsolt Szegedi, Technical Sales Engineer Romania, Austria and Hungary.

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