Strategic Center for Natural Gas & Oil SMART DRILL PIPE – REVOLUTIONIZING THE INDUSTRY The quest for high-speed data transmission has been a holy grail in the exploration and drilling disciplines since its inception. High-speed transmission is essential to evaluate the down-hole drilling environment, accurately characterize the formation being drilled, and precisely navigate well bores to targeted reservoirs in real time. Since 1939, technology has been proposed to provide data from down-hole to the surface. The technical barrier has been the couplings between the discrete pipe sections comprising the drill string. Mud pulse telemetry eliminates the need to hard wire pipe and electrical connections and transmits data as pressure pulses through fluid circulated to clean the cuttings out of the well bore. But the excruciatingly slow pace of mud pulse telemetry — 3 to 10 bits per second — often means that data resolution and tool reliability is so poor that the driller cannot make crucial decisions in real time.
