Figure 5.5 An earlv Four Wheel Drive cement truck (probably Halliburton!in Turner Valley. late twenties or early thirties. The men on the left feed the bagged concur into the hopper and it is earned up to the truck mounted mixer. One line on the rieht brings in the water lor mixing the cement while the other takes the cement slurry and forces it downhole. The mixer on the truck is steam powered. Photo courtesy of (lie (lenbou Archives. NA-4614-21.

affiliated rigs which had to carry out the work on the lease entirely l>v hand.1'CEMENTING THE HOLEAnother regular though less frequent procedure was cementing, and it was practised on both cable tool and rotary drilled holes. Cementing is the means still used to separate oil and gas producing horizons from each other and from water bearing strata, and to anchor the casing in the hole. If cement were not used to secure the casing tightly in the hole, and a strong flow of oil or gas were to enter the annulus when the crew closed the well at the top. the casing would come shooting out of the hole into the derrick or mast This would constitute a blowout. Moreover, it is necessary' to cemcnt the casing solid to anchor the rig's valves, control head, and/or blowout prevention equipment when drilling is taking place. In addition to these two early uses, it was discovered after World War II that cement also added strength to the casing and protected it from corrosion. Sometimes this unwelcome water came from the formation which contained the oil. but more often the source was an upper sand formation.14Oilwell cementing was introduced to deal with these problems, and ii became the process of placing a cement slurry in the annular space, the area between a string of casing and the open borehole. Once set, the cement bonded the metal casing to the rock formation and made the hole stable for the drilling tools- Cementing is the means still used to anchor the casing in the hole while separating oil and gas producing horizons from each other and from water bearing strata. If cement was not used to secure the casing tightly in the hole and a strong flow of oil or gas was to enter the annulus, hen the crew closed the well at the top the casing would come shooting out of the rig floor, constituting a blowout. The casing must be solid to anchor the rigs valves, control head, and blowout prevention equipment when drilling is taking place. It was discovered after World War II that cement also added strength to the casing and protected it from corrosion.15The efficiency of the cementing operation was confirmed in the early years if no water showed in the borehole. Later, hardness became a test as well, and where cement corcs showed weakness, it was concluded that the cement had been contaminated in some way. In rotary rigs it therefore became a practice to keep mud and cement apart, and to flush out the hole before cementing. As wells went deeper, a cementing job was successful if it had a slow setting time and did not harden while ii was coming out of the pipe.1'1 All the same, unsuitable oil well cements and sloppy cementing techniques were used, and they both caused problems.The introduction of cement to deal with a down- hole problem began in California in 1903 at a Union Oil well site when, in order to stop a flow of water into the hole, a company employee took matters into his own hands. I lc dumped fifty bags of cement down the hole by means of a bailer of his own design, and then set the casing down into this mixture to the bottom of the hole. After twenty-eight days, the cement inside the casing was drilled out and the hole was takeninto the oil sands without any further water seepage. Cementing casing quickly beca me an accepted practico in other California fields having water problems,1 and the technique became standard practice in Alberta in cases of water intrusion or borehole cave-ins.In the first few years, before World War ! and in some cases into ihc early 1920s, casing ccmcnt was hand-mixed on the lease. It was dumped from the cloth sacks into a four-by-eight-by-one-foot wood mortar box. Water was mixed in with mortar hoes and the slurry was then shovelled into the open hole. It was forced down the casing by a steam hose until the desired areas were l>clieved to have been filled.A dump bailer soon supplemented the gravity mcihod of placing the ccmcnt. First the hole was completely filled with water. Next the dump bailer was filled with ccmcnt and lowered down the casing until it reached the bottom of the hole. Once there, thebottom Hap was opened, permitting the ccmcnt to fill the casing and How and part-way up the annulus.* This involved many trips, and while one load of ccmcnt was going down another was being mixed. When the area was full, a plug (at first wooden and later rubber) was inserted into the hole and driven all the way down the casing into the still wet cement under pressure from a column of water. The plug, which fit snugly inside of the casing, forced the cement back toward the surface by way of the annulus. The ccmcnt, now lodged in the annulus between the formation and the casing, was allowed to set for about fourteen days. After the cement had cured, the bit was sent down to pound out the plug and any excess ccmcnt blocking the casing.1'' so that drilling could resumed" Vic Timmins rccalls cementing an Imperial well at Bruderheim in the 1950s that took an uncommonly high 250 cement plugs because there was a need for a fast setup in a lost circulation area.-1 This far exceeded the norm in the Alberta fields.One problem facing the eatlv cementing crews as they put in their plugs was trying to determine where the plug was in relation to the bottom of the hole In 1926, American, E. Paul Halliburton introduced the vvell sounding device." a piece of clothesline ire which went through a stuffing box to measure the depth of the upper plug during its travel down the casing. This prototype was followed by a use of a plow- steel w ire and a measuring wheel with a counter. Well into the 1930s, I lalliburton only leased the model out

Figure 5.6 \ group of interested onlookers watch as the ccmcnt bags stored at the tight are taken down and cut open prior to being led into the truck mounted mixer. Inch then sent the mixture dow nhole. Photo courtesy of

the Provnicial Archives of Albctta. P I707.to those who did their own cementing.*' In later years other companies'4 copied the idea.The manual method of mixing cement was inadequate for deep holes. In 1922, the Halliburton Jet Mixer" appeared just as the limit had been reached for hand mixing and manual insertion of cement into the annulus. This machine could mix and put large quantities of ccmcnt down the hole in a short period of time. Its success led to by K. Paul Halliburtons I924 formation of Halliburton Oil Well Cementing. The Jet Mixer*' consisted of not much more than a ccmcnt hopper, a water inlet, a mixing chambcr, and a discharge spout conncctcd to che borehole via a powerful Cement pump. Other cementing specialty equipment companies were formed about the same time and they proceeded to develop well-cementing techniques and machinery for the American and foreign oilfields.*'' Cementing took two forms. Primary cementing involved cementing the casing into place inside the hole. Secondary cementing was most often "squeeze cementing,'' a technique designed to seal off water or gas formations from the hole. Squeeze cementing. hr>t attempted in the I'nitcd States in 1934, involved the rapid pumping of a great deal of ccmcnt down the hole. ' The American drillers were convinced that those wells with the most cement pumped into the formation under the highest pressure had the highest chance of success in cutting off any seepage of unwanted gas or ater into the hole. The equipment wasROUGHNECKS. ROCK BITS AND RIGS

Ch*pt*r Fiva THE STANDARD CABLE TOOL RIG. SPUDDING-IN CEREMONIES* 3

ES A 0 l ..ili IV A* 09:56 p.m.ROUGHNECKS. ROCK BITS AND RIGS

ROUGHNECKS. ROCK BITS AND RIGS

Figure 5.7 These men on n rocarv rig in Turney Volley hi the 19,50 arc making rcsdv for cementing. The iwivel at the right ha licen placed in the rat hole while the hole i* prepared. Mere the Kelly hose is being connected to the ccmcnt head, ot ccinent rcccivcr. u Inch M ill direct it downhole. Note the lack of safety equipment of anv kind and the me of the bands and plank to support one of the men a he tightens rhc ccinent head and the kellv hose. Photo courtesy of the Provincial Archives of Albert j. P 1984.

much heavier rhan that used to carry out primary cementing because it had to deliver a cement slurry at a higher pressure than had ever before been required.Cementing was also used to control blowouts. I leavy mud slurries were pumped into the well followed by ccmcnt under high pressure.-'' When a blowout made it impossible to pump anything ill, a directional hole had to be drilled so that it met the bottom of the wild well, an act requiring great skill. Heavy mud and cement were pumped in via the directional well in order to bring the blowout under control.Scenes such as this at Illinois-.Albert a #1, when the casing was being cemented into place, became com- monplacc in Turner Valley in the days before the ccmcnc trucks with their attached mixers made their first appearance:For seven hours the crew forced water into the casing tinder enormous pressure in Order to start circulation clown the 4 3/4 inch casing and up again between it and the six-inch. \ gang of eleven men was kept busy emptying bags of ccmcnt into the mixer connected to the cement pump borrowed from the Royalire Company. After 35 minutes... it was decided that the well was properly ccmcntcd, as the cement had been forced all the way around the 4 3/4 inch casing and part way up the six-inch casing... When the drilling is resumed on Monday there will be 17 feet of cement to be drilled out of the bottom of the casing. Therefore by Tuesday at the latest the drill will Ik- pounding its way down through the new hole.'1This cementing job may have been a success, but lllinois-Albcrta *1 was a dry hole that was abandoned on March I, 1927.Ccmcnt trucks arrived in the Valiev in late 1926. The first in Canada was the HOWCO (llall Oil Well Co.) truck. It had a gasoline engine and on its bed were mounted two steam-driven pumps, hence the nickname IIOWCO Two Pumper. In 1939 a Three Pumper Steamer" appeared. -1 When the ccmcnter arrived, the rig had to supply it w ith clean water which had been trucked in and placed in a tank, a dugout. or was on standby in a water truck ;; This pattern was to persist into the future. The rig also had to supply the necessary labour, and in the days before the bulk ccmcnt trucks with their mixers and their cforc long, the two firms were offering cementing, acidizing, and drill stem testing services to the oil companies operating in the Valley.42 Royalite. however, brought in its own equipment and. whenever possible, cemented its own Turner Valley wells.

Chp(*r Fio THE STANDARD CA8LE TOOL KIG. SPUDDINC-IN CEREMONIES* *5

ES A 0 l ..ili IV A* 09:56 p.m.