For the longest time, OCTGs have boiled down to one thing---steel. OCTGs is short for oil country tubular goods.
No matter what specific piece of tubing was needed in a particular phase of the drilling process, it was going to involve shoving a big steel pipe down in the hole and attaching another one on top of it. Yet the materials revolution has finally caught up to the oil field services industry in the form of some amazing new composite OCTGs technology that is increasing safety and improving rig performance by cutting pipe weights in half and tailoring the makeup of the product to the specific application's requirements.
Rather than being a straight piece of solid steel that is alloyed and tempered to meet very precise requirements in terms of such things as tensile strength and friction, the new composite OCTG creations are comprised of carbon fiber and epoxy resin. This produces a pipe that is less than half the weight of a traditional steel tube, which turns out to be a huge advantage as rigs delve ever deeper into the earth or ocean bed. The composite tubes can be customized to any engineering specification through the addition of more radial, longitudinal, or slant fibers to increase pressure capability, compression strength, and torque resistance respectively.
Of course the reduction in weight of OCTGs also leads to substantial cost savings when it comes to transport expenses, and a lighter pipe is much easier to maneuver and offers a substantial reduction in the potential for injury to the rig operators. As new OCTG materials gain acceptance in the field, it is to be expected that new methods of employing those new materials will shortly be developed to take full advantage of the new potential which they offer. Steel pipe is not dead by a long shot, but it has a new sibling that can be of great utility in a number of exotic configurations, and their continued acceptance is highly probable.
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