Belorusneft beats Belarus' all-time drilling footage record

The exact figure will be revealed in early January 2020, however, the company is already past 107% of the target. Belorusneft's Svetlogorsk drilling department is to blame for the new record. In 2018 the team drilled 137,461 meters of rock and built 50 wells. Back then the team beat the record registered in 1975 – 135,716 meters.

The new result was made possible thanks to efforts of 14 crews of the Svetlogorsk drilling department.

The department head Viktor Arkhipenko underlined: “The customer revised our initial target back in August because of our faster work. The target was revised from 150,000 meters to 156,500 meters. But we've managed to beat even the revised target.”

The good performance is also attributed to the use of rock-cutting tools, downhole screw motors, rotary-controlled systems, the corresponding hydraulic regime programs and, of course, smooth actions of the drilling crews.

The retooling of the available drilling arsenal continued in 2019. “The resupply effort primarily targeted the drilling rigs Uralmash 3D-76(86). We are talking about purification systems, mud pumps, hydraulic tongs, internal-combustion engines, and diesel generators,” the press service explained.

Belorusneft has already put together next year's drilling program. The Svetlogorsk drilling department will have to drill 160,250 meters of rock (124,069 meters for production drilling and 36,181 meters for prospecting and exploratory drilling) and build 51 wells.

The drilling crews will continue getting the necessary equipment. A new powerful drilling rig with the lifting capacity of 650 tonnes and a variable speed drive system is supposed to be delivered. Connecting several drilling rigs to the external power grid will be an important and responsible step next year.

In 2020 the Svetlogorsk drilling department is also supposed to commission a second mobile drilling rig ARS-250 and mobilize a drilling crew in OOO Belorusneft-Siberia.