The Westchester, Pennsylvania-based company recently shipped one of its new T500XD Telemast drilling rigs to a customer for use in the Utica and Marcellus plays.

The latest rig in Schramm's Telemast drilling rig line, the T500XD, has a number of interesting characteristics, said Fred Slack, vice president of business development at Schramm, in an interview with Rigzone.  Unlike traditional rigs which are on rails that only allow movement from left to right or front to back, the T500XD has a walking subbase which lifts the entire rig six inches allowing the rig to turn.

The rig can walk at a pace of 30 feet per hour and move a full 360 degrees, rather than moving forward and back or side to side, and can move quickly from hole to hole without the traditional two-axis pad mounted design limit.  The T500XD also "talks" in that it allows drilling data to be transmitted via the Internet or satellite communications systems to remote operations centers in multiple locations, Slack noted.

The rig, which is in the 500,000-pound hook load class, can drill horizontally or directionally to 15,000 feet or more, and can control weight on bit without utilizing traditional drill collars.

The T500XD also offers best in class 35,000 feet-pounds of top head torque, third party directional steering interface and 80,000 pounds of hydraulic pulldown capacity.

The T500XD also features the LoadSafe XD automated pipe handling system can handle 24-inch diameter Range III tubulars weighing up to 10,000 pounds. In this system, drill pipe also is racked in the horizontal position for easy loading and offloading, dramatically improving operator safety.