ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,385,323, issued on Aug. 12, was assigned to Schlumberger Technology Corp. (Sugar Land, Texas).
"Downhole directional drilling tool" was invented by Andrew Mueller (Sugar Land, Texas), Dennis Patrick Chesnutt (Katy, Texas), Ke Chen (Houston), Xiaoge Gan (Houston) and Venkatesh Karuppiah (The Woodlands, Texas).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A downhole tool has a directional pad that contacts a wellbore wall at a pad contact location and a drill bit with at least one active cutting element that contacts the wellbore wall at a cutting element contact location. A contact distance between the pad contact location and the cutting element contact...