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Oea Team Jun 14, 2018 2 min read

9 - What Is A Special Drift Casing?

Updated: Aug 22, 2018

Casing is an essential part of an oil or

gas well. since It:

secures weak formations from

collapsing,
provides a mean to contain
pressure in the case of well
control, and
serves as a conduit for tools and
equipment used to execute the
next phase of the well (whether it
is drilling or completion).

This last function (of being a conduit) is the main reason why we drift the casing. So let us
now examine few concepts:

What is drifting?
It is the process of passing a cylinder through the casing joints (before running them in
the hole) to con rm that the casing roundness and eccentricity are not below an
allowable threshold (in other words, to make sure that the casing's inner diameter is
large enough to allow tools and equipment to pass through it without obstruction).

Isn't Casing Manufactured According To A Speci ed ID and OD?

It is true that casing is manufactured according to speci c dimensions. However; the
manufacturing process isn't perfect enough to guarantee size-consistency (even within
the same joint). Therefore; tolerances are allowed in the manufacturing process.

Then What Is "Special Drift" Casing?

As mentioned earlier, a drift is used to ensure that the casing inner diameter doesn't fall
below a certain size. But since the allowable tolerance might di er from an application to
another, the Oil & Gas industry identi ed three drift categories:

API Drift: It is the drift size that meets the API 5CT speci cations (ISO 11960). It is
id d th i i i d t d d i th i d t
 considered as the minimum required standard in the industry.

Alternative Drift: is a size of drift (more conservative in some casing sizes) that is listed in
the API 5CT speci cations as an alternative to the API drift.

Special drift: it refers to any drift speciHome

cations other
About Us than the ones
Services Bloglisted in the
Gallery API 5CT
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speci cations. They tend to be the most conservative (this is what largeNew
operators
request usually).

Also, We will be happy to share more details on this post, so please don't hesitate to
contact one of our team members.

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