Delta Drill Pipe Connection

With the Grant Prideco™ Delta™ connection, you no longer have to sacrifice performance for cost. With millions of feet of drill pipe using Delta connections in the field, hundreds of wells drilled on land and offshore, and hundreds of thousands of individual connection inspections confirming its ruggedness, Delta is able to benefit your drilling operations while lowering your cost of ownership.

Delta delivers improved overall performance compared to our XT™ connection but with the ease of use and lower cost of maintenance of an API connection.

Extreme performance

Delta belongs to the same torque segment as our XT connection and offers the same hydraulic performance. Through design optimization and balancing of stresses, the connection’s enhanced fatigue resistance eliminates the need for cold-rolling drill pipe connections. In summary, the Delta connection offers:

• Extreme torque (with as much as 20% more than XT) for drilling more extended-reach wells
• Enhanced hydraulics (~30-40% reduction in pressure losses compared to API) to promote faster drilling with more downhole tool power and improved hole cleaning
• Streamlined design to allow using larger drill pipe size, reducing vibrations for better borehole quality

Easy to use and low cost of maintenance

With a deep stab in, more threads engaged through spinning, and a reduced tong-free length on the box tool joint OD, the Delta connection is as easy to run as an API connection—a sentiment confirmed by rig crews we visited.

With up to 50% faster makeup than the XT connection, Delta saves up to 4 seconds on each connection makeup and breakout. This savings reduces tripping time and helps bring forth first oil, earning money for the operator and making a drilling contractor’s rig more attractive.

As the most balanced drill pipe connection we have ever put to market, Delta offers a cost of maintenance comparable to that of an API connection while providing improved performance. With more relaxed inspection criteria and 50% more opportunity to reface the connection, Delta shows a very low recut rate and requires 30% less material to recut the connection. In addition, monitoring of the first 108,000 connection inspections showed Delta requires 3.1 times fewer recuts than XT—meaning cheaper repair bills, fewer pipe movements for repair, and simply less pipe needed as contingency.