| CPC E21B 17/006 (2013.01) [G06K 7/1413 (2013.01); G06K 7/1417 (2013.01)] | 9 Claims |
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1. A method of handling tubular sections and/or other downhole components for use in constructing a tubular structure to be lowered into a well bore extending through a formation of the Earth beneath a platform, the method comprising:
providing first and second associated machine readable codes on an external surface of each tubular section and/or each other downhole component, wherein each first code encodes information including a unique identifier and comprises a 2D barcode and/or a radio-frequency identification tag, each second code comprises a 1D barcode and, for each section or component: the second code encodes less information than the first code; and the second code, or the information encoded by the second code, is derivable from, or mapped to, the information encoded in the first code;
using a machine to read the first machine readable code from the tubular sections or components at a first pipe handling location on said platform;
storing information of the read first codes in a computer data storage medium;
moving the tubular sections or components in turn from said first pipe handling location to a second pipe handling location, the second pipe handling location being a tubular structure assembly location on said platform or a location intermediate said first location and said tubular structure assembly location;
using an optical machine at or close to the second pipe handling location to read the second codes from positioned tubular sections or components;
storing information of the read second codes and their sequence order in a computer data storage medium; and
determining for each of the read second codes an associated first code or a corresponding unique identifier from the read first codes, in order to determine a sequence of first codes or identifiers uniquely identifying the sequence of tubular sections and/or other downhole components passing through the second pipe handling location.
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