Working on the rig floor while "tripping out" pipe

"Tripping out" drill pipe

The phrase "tripping out" is an oilfield phrase unless we're discussing the 1970's hippy generation, perhaps. What it means is simply this: Pulling thousands of feet of drill pipe straight up out of the ground and stacking piece after piece neatly together. Basically, take a look at the picture below. All of the pipe in that picture is pipe that was in the ground. The sections, one after another, that you see there, are called "stands" of pipe. For some rigs, a "stand" of pipe is two 45-foot pipes screwed together, and for other rigs, a stand is three 30-foot pipes screwed together. In the picture below, we can see that each stand consists of three pipes.

Usually during tripping out pipe, two people are on the rig floor while another person is up on the monkey board, 90 feet or so above the rig floor (in that little box at the top of the stands of pipe that you can see in the picture). Then a fourth very important person--the driller--is controlling the draw works, the elevators, and sometimes the iron roughneck (the device that unscrews each stand from the one below it). On newer rigs, the driller sits in the "driller's cabin," which would be that small blue box that you can see in the picture. He has a window in front of him so he can look out onto the rig floor, and he also has a skylight window, so he can see what is happening above.

Basically, then, the driller pulls up the first stand of pipe out of the ground. The elevators are having to pull up the entire weight of the drill string during this process while also overcoming the friction of the ground. 

1. Driller pulls up drill pipe until an entire stand is out of the ground
2. Roughnecks on rig floor "set the slips," meaning they toss a 150-pound stopper just below the bottom of this first stand that is up above the rig floor. Setting the slips means that the driller can slightly lower the elevators that are holding the top of the stand such that the stand can be unscrewed from the one below it--this unscrewing of stands happens at the rig floor. 
3. The roughnecks or the driller, depending on the rig, uses either tongs or an "iron roughneck" to unscrew this first stand a few feet above the rig floor. Once this first stand is unscrewed from the very top of the next stand (almost all of which is below the rig floor and in the ground), the driller will extend the elevators toward the front of the rig, which allows the floorhands to push the bottom of this first stand to where it needs to be on the rig mat. This is one of the most dangerous times during tripping out because a) the bottom of a 90-foot stand is hovering a few feet above the rig floor, b) one or two people are pushing this end together to where it needs to be, and c) the driller is lowering the stand to where it needs to rest on the rig mat. "Keep your feet as far away from that as you can," my first driller told me when I was first learning. You can imagine why.
4. Once the team places the bottom of the stand on the rig floor, the derrickman 90 feet above unlatches the elevators (unless the driller does this (only possible with hydraulic elevators)), and then he slings a rope around the top of the stand, pulling it toward him into the "alleyway," then filing it where it needs to go into one of the "fingers." In other words, the derrickman "racks back" each stand. Some rope is involved in keeping the stands where they need to be as well. If the derrickman didn't tie off each stand that he racks back, eventually one of the stands would fall into the alleyway, possibly then falling toward the derrick, which could end in a bad day depending on what the pipe hits.
   
5. As the derrickman finishes racking back the pipe, the driller lowers the elevators to get them latched onto the top of the next stand, which is sticking up above the rig floor maybe three feet. This little section of the top of this next stand is called "the stump." 
6. The driller then pulls up on this next stand while the floorhands "pull the slips." 

The process repeats time and time again until the team reaches the BHA (the bottom-hole assembly), which consists of the 90-pound per-foot drill collars, the directional tool (aka the mud motor) and the drill bit. This is arguably one of the most intense periods during tripping out because a) all the big shots--the company man and the rig supervisor--are on the rig floor watching to see what is going on, and b) dealing with the drill collars and subsequent parts of the remaining drill string involves hammers, lifting subs, pipe wrenches, chain tongs, winch lines and other tools that one must constantly use quickly. The steps are many, but a general idea is as follows:

1. When the first drill collar reaches the rig floor, the floorhands throw in the collar slips.
2. Then one roughneck slaps a "wedding band" on this top part of the collar; the one on the other side of the collar latches the wedding band shut, screws it tight by hand, then begins wrenching on it to get it as tight as possible while the other roughneck begins hammering the wedding band. The wedding band is deemed tight. 
3. The iron roughneck unscrews the stand above from the drill collar at the rig floor.
4. The floorhands push on the bottom of this stand, guiding its end as the driller lowers it to the rig mat.
5. Then one floorhand goes to the winch line controls.
6. The other grabs the end of the winch line, connecting it to a "lifting sub," which they must screw into the top of the drill collar so the elevators can latch onto something to keep getting the drill string out of the ground.
7. The guy at the end of the winch line signals to the guy on the winch controls that the lifting sub is ready to take flight.
8. The guy at the winch controls lifts up on the lifting sub just enough for the guy holding onto it to guide it to the stump, which is the top of the first collar.
9. The winch line guy lowers the lifting sub just enough for the guy who's guiding the lift sub to screw it into the top of the collar.
10. They put the winch line to the side so it's out of the way.
11. Using the iron roughneck or tongs, the roughnecks or driller then torque the lift sub to the collar at a certain torque.
12. Now they latch the elevators onto the lift sub, which is screwed into the collar so everything can now be lifted.
13. The two roughnecks remove the wedding band by using a pipe wrench.
14. They pull the collar slips out.
15. The driller pulls this first collar all the way up just as if he were pulling up a stand of pipe when tripping out. 
16. The roughnecks throw the collar slips back in, then connect the wedding band again.
17. With the iron roughneck or tongs, the team unscrews this first collar for the second one.
18. The driller lifts up and kicks out the free collar slightly.
19. The roughnecks shove the end of the collar to where it needs to be while the driller lowers it down to the rig mat.
20. The derrickman ropes the collar in similar fashion to how he would a regular stand of drill pipe.

Racking back a collar is generally harder because the collars are so heavy, but they luckily don't have to go as far as regular stands of drill pipe either. After racking back generally three or four of these heaviest sections of pipe, then the team must utilize the pipe wrangler to deal with the mud motor. Then once the drill bit is finally above the hole, they must throw in what's called a bit box, which is a special frame that the driller lowers the drill bit into so the drill bit can be unscrewed.  

Reasons for tripping out

Oftentimes, tripping out pipe is necessary in the event of tool failure, meaning that the directional tool just behind the drill bit has stopped working. Sometimes, too, the drill bit stops working. A crew also trips out pipe upon completing a well or a section of a well.

Sometimes the crew realizes that it must trip out pipe because pieces of rubber appear on the shakers, which separate a) the cuttings of the earth produced by the drill bit from b) the drilling fluid.