Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

To: 21twelve
If they took a 30 meter core, and recovered all the core, the only difference it would make is that the hands would be tripping 70% less...(You still get all the core, ideally).

The reasons not to: Unconsolidated material, and a high risk of losing core, running a core barrel with a sleeve designed for unconsolidated material, which is a shorter core barrel, but has a better recovery rate in unconsolidated sediment (or highly fractured rock).

Or they figure the fractured rock will slide along the fracture planes while coring and jam the inner barrel, at which point one of two things happens--

You either continue to your full barrel depth and grind up the core from the point where you jammed the barrel...

... or You stop coring anyway, because the rock will not slide up the inner barrel and that supports the weight you are trying to put on the bit (which can no longer cut the rock below it).

In the first case you think you are coring, but you lost data instead.

In the second, you just aren't going any farther and end up tripping anyway.

I have seen both events in the years I have spent in the patch.

(And yes, I have seen a number of expensive screw-ups happen, too).

26 posted on 03/07/2016 12:31:49 AM PST by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies ]


To: Smokin' Joe

“You still get all the core, ideally.”

Oh - duh! (On my part!) I only worked a couple of summers in the oil patch - we never did any coring. The geologist would get grab samples as the mud came back up. I’m guessing we must have been drilling in a field that was pretty well figured out? (This was back in the early 80’s).


30 posted on 03/07/2016 1:59:36 AM PST by 21twelve (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2185147/posts It is happening again.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 26 | View Replies ]

To: Smokin' Joe

What do you mean by ‘tripping’?


56 posted on 05/13/2016 3:28:44 PM PDT by lepton ("It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into"--Jonathan Swift)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 26 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson