When I started as an MWD field technician in 2011, the industry looked a lot different. I still remember arriving at my first rig in Pyote, TX—my first day on the job, my first time in West Texas, and my first time seeing a drilling rig up close. While I wasn’t around for the days of dropping acid-filled glass bottles downhole to measure inclination, I came in early enough that being sent to a rig without internet access wasn’t uncommon.
A When One Pulse Throws Everything Off
One memory that stands out is drilling in the Barnett Shale near Boyd, TX, in 2012. The Barnett had a reputation for easy drilling and easy living, but that particular job was anything but. At the time, natural gas prices were falling fast, and so was the rig count. The energy company we were working for was making contract decisions based on performance—namely speed and a flawless safety record. That meant zero tolerance for downtime, especially when it came to MWD.
We weren’t more than a couple of surveys into the lateral when we started struggling to catch sync. At first, the cause wasn’t obvious. Sync pulses before the RxDT elapsed? No. The signal was strong, yet one pulse in the sync sequence was slightly off, throwing the outdated decoding software into confusion. No visible noise in the pressure trace. Same behavior running two pumps or one, at varying flow rates. Meanwhile, the company man was breathing down my neck, threatening to “run me off” if we didn’t fix the issue immediately. In the Barnett, drilling fast wasn’t just expected—it was required.
Everything pointed to the top-mount pulser downhole. With no immediate solution, I swapped components, adjusted flow parameters, and hoped the conditions downhole would shift just enough for the MWD decoder to catch sync. Otherwise, we’d have no choice but to trip—a costly and frustrating outcome for a tool that was otherwise functioning perfectly. Back then, you called your coordinator, but if they didn’t have an answer, you were on your own. Real-time support from product manufacturers was almost nonexistent. It was high-pressure, problem-solving in its rawest form.
A Different Kind of Troubleshooting
Fast forward a decade, and I found myself on the other side of the equation—handling support requests for Erdos Miller. Not only was I instructed to provide 24/7 assistance, but I also had a direct line to engineering when needed. One call, in particular, stands out. A field hand reported an abrupt loss of confidence after the survey sequence was decoded. Much like I had felt 10 years earlier, he was isolated, with no one to turn to for help. Morale at the rig site had plummeted, and all fingers were pointing at him as the cause.
I dug into the issue, and it wasn’t just a confidence drop—Eclipse Touch wasn’t decoding, yet the pulses were as clean as a bank test. No signs of pump noise ruled out typical downhole interference. Everything pointed to a misconfiguration. After a few targeted questions, the field hand mentioned programming the MicroPulse with a backup computer, though he was certain he had loaded the correct configuration into the decoder on the primary shack laptop. Once I accessed the backup laptop’s database, the problem became clear—the configuration used to program the tool didn’t quite match the one in the decoder. A quick correction, and within minutes, the issue was resolved. Drilling and gamma logging could resume.
The relief in his voice over the phone was unmistakable—those moments of problem-solving always take me back to my early days in the field, where every small victory felt like a huge win.
Coming Full Circle
In 2024, less than 5% of the support requests we received involved non-productive time (NPT). Considering that NPT can be the deciding factor in whether a service company keeps or loses a contract, these moments can make or break careers as well as small MWD companies.
In many ways, my MWD career has come full circle. From being the one struggling to find answers in the field to now being part of the solution, it’s been an incredible journey.
Author:
Clayton Carter - Field Support Specialist
