How can I update this db_query statement to db_insert for D7?
The standard way is to use the db_insert() function with an associative array of field names/values:

$fields = array(
  'id' =&gt; $id,
  'name' =&gt; $name
);

db_insert('bluga_request')-&gt;fields($fields)-&gt;execute();


It actually looks like in your case the fields are already set up as an associative array in $args so you would just do this:

db_insert('bluga_request')-&gt;fields($args)-&gt;execute();