How Downhole Transducers Work

Summary: Oil drilling is a complex operation, and without sensing pressure, it amounts to guess work at best.

In order to extract oil and natural gas from the ground, engineers need to drill deep into the earth. In the olden days, a great bar was lifted into the air and struck forcefully into the ground. This is where a down-hole transducer comes in handy.

A lot of time and effort goes into prospecting for oil, and finding a field that produces can be a costly endeavor. Plus, fields that have oil don’t necessarily have it by the barrel full. When engineers find an area that they suspect to be oil-rich, they do some testing to estimate the quantity of oil they might have below the ground.

Drilling companies utilize down-hole pressure transducers inside of the drilling pipe to gauge the oil in the reservoir. This piece measures the volume of oil and gives accurate readings of what actually lies in the reservoir. This way, companies can conduct their testing before deploying expensive equipments to drill into a small puddle.

The gas company utilizes geologists, whose job it is to read the downhole pressure sensor and determine if it is worth the time and resources to drill.

Monitoring these drill sites isn’t a one-time deal. Geologists are on-hand for most of the drilling process to continually read the pressure and observe the drilling operation. Observation of these readings helps technicians guage how quickly the supply is depleting. Without this knowledge, oil drilling would be no more than expensive guess work.