World's Longest Directional Drill

Field Joint Coating for Long Directional Drill

*I have two sources for this article.  One is Stan Simpson who was involved in this project back in 1999 / 2000.  The second is an article written and published in Pipeline & Gas Journal in April 2000. 

 

     Though directional drilling applications have seemingly gotten more and more complicated as the recent decade or two have passed (including bundled directional drills with as many as four pipelines travelling through the whole at once) it is almost hard to believe that 14 years ago, BP and Mustang Engineering undertook a directional drilling project that was (to that point) unheard of:  a 5.4 mile long section of pipe directionally drilled underneath Lavaca Bay! 

 

     As if that wasn't enough of a head ache, they also had to deal with the fact that Lavaca Bay was a federal Environmental Protection Agency environmentally sensitive superfund site involving mercury containing sediments.  The longest directional drill?  Through a section of bay already being watched by the government?  There was going to be no room for error on the field joint coatings for this project...

     So what did they decide to use?  Yes: DIRAX.  The thickness, penetration resistance, peel, abrasion resistance, and shear of the DIRAX shrink sleeve system is simply unmatched in the industry.  Dirax utilizes a high shear, two part epoxy as the primary corrosion coating on the field joint.  A shrink sleeve is then installed on top of that epoxy and as the sleeve is installed, the epoxy and the adhesive of the sleeve become physically and chemically bonded. That Dirax sleeve isn't going anywhere - and with hundreds of thousands of field joints coated with Dirax and pulled through bore holes; we've yet to hear of a single case where the Dirax failed.  Not even one.

     Dirax did a fantastic job on this project and hundreds of other before and since.  If you don't have Dirax approved on your next project....why not?  Let's talk.