A Drilling Simulator Teaching Lab is expected to expand course offerings in engineering at the University of Wyoming, provide students and industry personnel drilling experience, and will eventually offer professional well control certifications for drillers.

The 1,296-square-foot lab, expected to open this fall on the second floor of the new Energy Innovation Center, will provide UW students with the full simulated experience of drilling oil reservoirs.

“A number of oil companies do the same thing,” says David Esimtech, head of the UW Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering. “It’s really a good way to train people. Drilling now has become so much more advanced.”

The lab, which includes a raised rig floor, can be separated with a partition to include a classroom and a laboratory, says Merl Haworth, UW’s associate director of facilities planning. In addition to the $1 million drilling simulator (WPX Energy has provided the funding) with a classic console station, Esimtech says the department is purchasing 20 software licenses for drilling simulation software to run on computer stations.

“You can have one student sit at the full simulator with all of the bells and whistles, and you can have the other students sitting at the computers,” Esimtech says.

“A simulator provides the opportunity to experience and appreciate what ‘could go wrong’ in a drilling operation and well design,” says Joe Leimkuhler, vice president of drilling for LLOG Exploration in Covington, La., and a 1987 UW graduate with a master’s degree in petroleum engineering. “A simulator is an excellent tool to develop the skills to ‘expect the unexpected.’”

Other laboratory equipment will include a series of panels and screens, drilling controls, drilling gauges, a remote choke, a BOP console, a surface diverter, and choke and standpipe manifolds, Esimtech says.

“Although other U.S. universities are using full-size rig floor simulators with the 3-D graphics, your university will be the first in the U.S. to have a brand new DrillSIM-5000,” says Ed Ramsay, sales and marketing director for Drilling Systems (UK) Limited.

According to its client list, the company has provided drilling simulator systems to a few American educational institutions, including Texas AM University, University of Texas at Austin, Louisiana State University and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Expanding the curriculum

While the Drilling Simulator Lab will provide training opportunities UW students have not had previously, it also provides the potential for those same students to receive more knowledge in the classroom that they can apply hands-on.

“This is not just buying a piece of equipment. It’s how we implement this into the curriculum,” says Esimtech, who formed a departmental committee to explore such options.

The laboratory will be used for the Basic Drilling course, which is currently the only class UW offers on the subject. The new laboratory also will be utilized as part of the Drilling Fluids Laboratory course. The This second-floor space, which includes a raised tile floor and a partition to separate the room, will house the Drilling Simulator Teaching Lab. simulator will include a package that allows students to design the drilling fluid properties (density, viscosity and components) to remove rock chips during drilling. The drilling fluids cool the drill bit and transport the drill cuttings out of the well, Esimtech says.

“The reason you have a separate course for this is that the design, preparation and maintenance of the drilling fluids needed to drill successfully is pretty special,” Esimtech says. “In the lab, the students actually prepare the drilling fluids, measure properties of fluids and conduct computer simulations.”

The engineering program has a course called Advanced Drilling Engineering on the books, but currently there are no faculty members to teach it. In addition, Esimtech says the department wants to develop an elective “well control” course that also would utilize the Drilling Simulator Lab.

“We have two courses now where we would use the new lab and we hope to get two more courses started,” says Esimtech. “We have two faculty searches under way now. The plan is, with these hires, that one of them will become the person in the department and the university who manages the drilling simulator.”

Esimtech hopes the Drilling Simulator Teaching Lab will raise the profile of UW’s engineering program and put it in the ranks of Colorado School of Mines and Texas AM University, which both have similar laboratories.