drilling costs to plummet, page-9

biache123

As I have stated in my previous posts, these rigs are for slim hole drilling, and the more info I see just firms up my beliefs. In the link you provided, it mention 3 1/2" oilfield DP and 5" "Slimhole" DP. I believe this "slimhole" is an external flush pipe used in mineral drilling and that I am not that familiar with as I am in the oilfield. If you do a google search for "slimhole 5inch drill pipe" you come up with CKK media release and nothing else as a direct match. The closest slim line pipe I could find had a WT39 tread and a 5 1/8" OD Box.
But the question to be asked why are they talking about these size drill pipes? Standard 5" drill pipe with 6 5/8" tool joints will drill 8 1/2" hole to run 7" casing. This is what PTR ran in SA. So CKK are talking about drilling 6 1/8" hole and running 5" casing. Very few logging tools will fit in a 6" hole, core barrels would be a squeeze, but as CKK are a coring company maybe they have such small sizes, but the flows required for geothermal will definitely be restricted.
Unical was a company always looking at cutting costs, the drilling team offered the geological team two choices, one a few exploration holes where they could run all their toys and get really good information or two, a lot of slim hole wells with limited information. The geo team choose the slim holes where they got a wide variety of locations. So there will be work for the rig as I see it, but not for producing geothermal wells
In fact PAX could have used this line of thinking and found the best place for there Mt Gambia well before spending all there money on one stuffed up $20mil producer that does not produce.