The Evolution of the Land Drilling Rig

Over the past 75 years, drillers have gone from the Stone Age to the Space Age when it comes to technological improvements in well construction methods. Yesterday’s crude wood and iron drilling techniques have given way to today’s video game-inspired controls and robotic assistance—much of which migrated from offshore applications. These advancements have driven costs down, efficiencies up, and operators ever deeper in the search for oil and gas.

Source: H&P.

The earliest land rigs used materials like bamboo and iron and were powered by animals such as horses or oxen. These rigs used percussive drilling to create the bore, repeatedly raising and dropping heavy iron bits—effective but slow. By the time Edwin Drake was drilling the Titusville well in 1859, steam engines had been introduced to help power now metal pipe down into the Earth’s crust. By the 1950s, steam-powered rigs gave way to diesel engines.

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