Page 11: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Jan/Feb 2026)

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PUSHING THE LIMITS OF DIRECTIONAL

DRILLING WITH HIGH-PERFORMANCE

DIGITAL MEMS INERTIAL SENSORS

By Pierre Gazull, Product Marketing Manager for

High-Performance MEMS inertial sensors at Tronics Microsystems

Directional drilling goes unconventional

After decades of exploiting conventional oil reservoirs, complex and unconventional complex wells have become the new standard in the energy landscape, calling for down- hole well intelligence and advanced drilling technologies that can meet the accuracy and productivity requirements of energy operators.

Deep oil reservoirs dispersed over large areas that had re- mained inaccessible can now be reached using techniques such as Measurement While Drilling (MWD) that provide extremely accurate real-time data to guarantee the bore- hole trajectory follows the predetermined path.

An MWD tool is made of a directional module, a telem- etry system for data transmission, as well as a battery pack.

It is located close to the drill bit to determine its position and attitude. The directional module embeds a set of elec- tronics devices and sensors to measure the two key param- eters needed for precision tool guidance: inclination, which is the angle formed between its sensitive axis and the verti- cal gravitational force, and azimuth, the angular distance with respect to the geographic or magnetic north pole.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2026 OFFSHORE ENGINEER 11