Drilling the holes for the miners in Utah

[1stTimeCaller]

One of my friends from work is one of the directional drillers that made two of the holes.


At the Crandall Canyon coal mine in Utah, our equipment and personnel have been contributing to the efforts to rescue six miners trapped after a mine collapse on August 6th. Our Rocky Mountain and Mid-Continent areas supplied air drilling motors and directional supervisors to drill an 8-3/4” hole 1880 ft to intersect the mineshaft. (An earlier 2-1/2” hole had been drilled to inject air into the mine) On Saturday August 11, the wellbore had reached the shaft, and a video camera was lowered through it into the well, but did not detect signs of the miners. A liner will be placed in the hole to permit additional runs with the camera, as rescue efforts continue. The rig was moved and on Monday August 13, a second directional hole was spudded to drill 1450 ft to reach a different section of the mine.

With that story and a dollar bill I think I can buy a coke.

[OUDoc]

You made a friend?

[1stTimeCaller]

one

[olevetonahill]

RIP
hate to say it , But they aint comin out alive !

[OUHOMER]

RIP
hate to say it , But they aint comin out alive !
sad, but i have to agree:(

[SoonerGirl06]

Why are they having such a hard time drilling a hole in the right location?
Don't the miners have some sort of GPS system that shows where their location is?

If they don't, they should. At least IMO that would make sense.

[Ike]

Why are they having such a hard time drilling a hole in the right location?
Don't the miners have some sort of GPS system that shows where their location is?

If they don't, they should. At least IMO that would make sense.

IMO (and I don't really know a lot about whats goin on apart from little bits I've picked up here and there), when the mine collapsed, they said they had a "good idea" where the miners were. However, there's no telling how the section of mine they were in may or may not have shifted, and also no telling where the miners might have gone in the nearly week that it's been since the incident. If I were one of them, I don't think I'd be sitting around waiting to get rescued. Certainly not for this long.


Oh, and GPS only works as long as you can get signal from sattelites in space. buried beneath a brazillian tons of rock, how good do you think that signal will be?

[KABOOKIE]

Oh, and GPS only works as long as you can get signal from sattelites in space. buried beneath a brazillian tons of rock, how good do you think that signal will be?


Ground Position System. Duh! ;)

[StoopTroup]

The Owner of the mining company seems to care about finding them whether it's dead or alive.

I'm sure they will continue until the miners are recovered.

I think they still have a chance of being alive.

There is plenty of potable water in there.

If they were in an area that collapsed however....it's going to be really sad for those families.

My prayers and thoughts are with all of those folks...

[SoonerGirl06]

Oh, and GPS only works as long as you can get signal from sattelites in space. buried beneath a brazillian tons of rock, how good do you think that signal will be?


Surely with all the technology available, they'd have some sort of tracking device.

[Ike]

Surely with all the technology available, they'd have some sort of tracking device.

You'd like to think so, but there are a ton of difficulties inherent in that. First off, forgetting GPS for a minute and just having something that sends a signal to a couple of control room antennas, the miners would have to carry a device capable of transmitting at absolutely enormous power levels. On the order of a TV antenna for a really deep mine. You can get around that perhaps by running a bunch of wires everywhere, and having much smaller transmitters, but then in the event of a collapse, you never know how much of your recievers will stay on line.

[oumartin]

is it just me or does that mines owner look like a total @sshat

[SoonerGirl06]

whatever he looks like... he sure does get on my nerves.

I don't know why, but he does,

[Soonerus]

is it just me or does that mines owner look like a total @sshat

He looks distressed to me...

[SoonerGirl06]

Possibly because he's worried about potential lawsuits?

[oumartin]

well i think the mining industry doesnt' give a rip about their employees and when something like this happens its all about talking out their rears about how safe they are.. Its a joke.

[olevetonahill]

Big John , Big Bad John .
Thier only hope :(

[oumartin]

here is what floors me. all these mine experts couldn't figure out that the light on the camera was gonna be absorbed like it was and that sticking a lens down a hole that has liquid in it is also gonna smudge the lens..

[SoonerGirl06]

It seems to me that they're going overboard in trying to prove that they're doing all that they can to save the miners.

IMO I think the owner has alterior (sp?) motives for all the showboating that's going on.

[oumartin]

interior? ;)

inferior? ;)

[1stTimeCaller]

Hey martin, they are using an electromagnetic MWD tool from Weatherford for the surveys.

[oumartin]

no wonder they can't land it exactly!

[1stTimeCaller]

heh!! ;)

[SoonerBorn68]

They might as well have had some blind dude with a cane. He could have tapped it out more accurately. :D

[Osce0la]

nm