The Oil and Gas production industry faces many technical problems in the search for new supplies of energy and this now involves them working in more extreme environmental conditions and drilling to greater depths all over the world. One of the areas where PASSIVE tagging is helping to solve some of these problems, is in the identification of drill pipes.

 Drill pipes are not fragile pieces of equipment as they come in a variety of lengths of up to 20 meters (60ft) and in diameters of up to 0.5 meter (1.5ft). However they can become fragile if they are not used in the correct way. If a pipe was to break when in the drilling process, (and some wells are 6 kilometers (4 miles) deep) it can be an expensive operation to recover the pipe lengths already in the ground, in both terms of time and money.

 When drilling, pipes are subjected to tremendous pressures, extremely high temperatures due to friction, violent shocks and exceptional rotational torque's.

 Drill pipes can become fragile if they are used in a repetitive position in the drill chain and so must be rotated to minimize stresses which can lead to breakage's. To control this rotation, each pipe must be uniquely identified and its rotational history kept in a computer database.

 Drill rigs are now being automated such that drill pipes are handled by machinery, rather than by men. This means that pipes need to be identified automatically and a control computer used to decide, when to use pipes, where to store pipe and decide when pipes are not capable of being used in a particular environment.

 A further complication of drill pipes is that as they are used they wear away by up to 7 millimeters (0.25in) across the pipe diameter. The pipe becomes weaker and can only be used in less strenuous environments, typically the North Sea is the most demanding and after this, pipes are sent to the Middle East and then on to the Mexican Gulf, after which the pipe scrapped.

 IDTAG is used in this drill pipe identification process, where it is embedded into the pipe at 7 to 8 millimeters under the metal surface to overcome the pipe wear problem. The IDTAG can be subjected to the extreme pressures, shocks and high temperatures it encounters whilst being used underground, as well as being able to withstand the low temperatures of the Sea based oil rigs.

 IDTAG can be read with special readers intrinsically safe to be read reliably in all environments with the tag buried into the pipe.

 Identifying drill pipes allows the drilling company to minimize pipe breakage's, maximize pipe life, keep accurate pipe inventory records consequently saving money and time.