The Coring Process

A core sample, or simply “core”, is a section of rock cut out (or cored) from a geological formation by core drilling.

Coring and core analysis are essential to the exploration, development and production phases of the oil and gas industry. A core provides engineers and geologists with a direct means to measure properties of reservoir rocks thus helping to improve their understanding of a reservoir, the prediction of its performance and the all important ‘reserves estimate’.

When an oil company wishes to obtain clear evidence of the properties of a particular formation, a core sample of that formation is needed.

As coring is expensive and time consuming, oil companies are keen to maximise the information that they can obtain from the core samples.

Coring is the only method of recovering large pieces of formation for detailed analysis, providing rock properties and descriptive data that cannot be determined from any other source.  It has been estimated that oil companies globally spend between $0.7bn and $1.7bn annually to obtain core samples.

Unnecessary trip in-trip outs can take 10-15 hours which, with offshore rig rates at $40K-$50K per hour, is a very expensive exercise. Moreover, use of our tool will prevent companies from having to spend millions of dollars side tracking a job where the entire core was milled in the first instance.