What IWCF Level 3 Is and What This Course Does
The Level 3 Driller certificate, who sits it, what this course prepares you for and what it cannot award.
10 min
Activities: 0 of 2
Independent exam preparation, not the certificate
The International Well Control Forum (IWCF) is a not-for-profit membership organisation, set up in 1992, that sets standards for well control training and assessment. It certifies candidates through its accredited training centres and assessment centres. This course is independent exam preparation. It is not an IWCF course, it is not affiliated with or endorsed by IWCF, it is not delivered by an accredited centre, and it does not award the IWCF Level 3 Driller certificate. Only IWCF, through an accredited centre, can assess you and issue that certificate.
What this course does is prepare you to walk into an accredited centre already fluent in the calculations, the procedures and the equipment, so the centre’s classroom days and simulator sessions confirm what you know instead of teaching it from zero. The course prepares; the centre trains and assesses; IWCF certifies.
Who Level 3 is for
IWCF recommends Level 3 of its Drilling Well Control programme for equipment operators: the people who take action to prevent or respond to a well control incident. In practice that means drillers, assistant drillers and the people moving towards those seats. Well intervention operators have their own Level 3 in IWCF’s separate Well Intervention Pressure Control programme, which this course does not cover. It is the first level at which a candidate must demonstrate well control on a drilling simulator as well as on paper. The training is classroom-based at an accredited centre, with written examinations and a practical assessment.
Level 3 sits between two others. The IWCF Level 2 Drilling Well Control Exam Preparation course covers the introductory level for roughnecks, derrickmen, mud loggers and others who influence well integrity but do not operate the equipment during a kick. The IWCF Level 4 Supervisor Well Control Exam Preparation course covers the supervisor level for toolpushers, company representatives and superintendents, where planning and risk management are added. The ground this course assumes is the Level 2 ground. If a topic in the recap lesson feels new, study that course first.
Three statements, kept apart
It teaches and drills the Principles and Procedures content, the Equipment content and the simulator routine at driller depth, with five simulator exercises built into the lessons.
How the course is built
Eight modules follow the shape of the Level 3 syllabus as it is generally taught: calculations first, then kick detection and shut-in, the kill sheet, the two kill methods, complications, equipment, and a consolidation module that ends with a full well kill on the simulator with no help. Every lesson ends with practice, every module ends with a quiz, and the worked examples all use one well, so the numbers become familiar: a 9,800 ft vertical well being drilled for Varnoth Energy by Delvane Offshore, with a 9⅝ in casing shoe at 6,500 ft and 10.5 ppg mud in the hole.
Field units (pounds per gallon, psi, feet and barrels) are used throughout because they are the units most centres teach in, and the metric equivalents are given where the exam may ask for them.
Four words to keep apart
A colleague says that finishing this course and passing its quizzes gives him an IWCF Level 3 certificate. Which reply is correct?