Overview

Horizontal drilling required approximately 15 years to evolve into a mature technology. During this time, the petroleum industry witnessed amazing feats of extended-reach technology, updip horizontal drilling, rotary-steerable technology, and now directional drilling with casing.

Horizontal drilling became feasible in the 1980s with the emergence of measurement-while-drilling downhole survey tools. Horizontal drilling continues to be a powerful application for exposing more reservoir per motherbore (multilaterals), increasing productivity from tight rock, acquiring exposure to multiple subsurface compartments, producing heavy-oil reservoirs (with steam-assisted gravity drainage), and managing waterdrive reservoirs.

It is a particularly strong application in clean sandstones with low-vertical-permeability barriers. However, horizontal drilling also can address thin-layered petroleum traps with poor-to-low horizontal permeability. Horizontal completions are limited only by the imaginations of those who drill horizontally.

There soon will be a day when one builds a curve considerably below the level of the lateral and places a subsurface pump below the level of production. How many of Earth’s petroleum reservoirs are shallow, have no reservoir pressure, cannot be drilled vertically economically, and yet will respond to gravity drainage in a horizontal wellbore?

Torque and Drag Modeling for Horizontal Openhole Completions

Predicting Success of Horizontal Openhole Completions on the North Slope

Cuttings Transport With Foam Under Simulated Downhole Horizontal Conditions

Designing High-Angle, Casing-Directionally-Drilled Wells

Charles R. Stone, SPE, is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Signa Engineering Corp. He has more than 25 years’ experience in domestic and international operations, both onshore and off. Stone has been involved in the design and management of unconventional oilfield techniques, including horizontal and underbalanced drilling, drilling with casing, managed-pressure drilling, and mudcap drilling. He has authored several technical papers and received the 2003 SPE Drilling Engineer of the Year Award. Stone holds a BS degree in mechanical engineering from Texas A&M University. He served as an SPE Distinguished Lecturer and as Chairperson of the SPE/IADC Underbalanced Technology Committee and currently serves on the JPT Editorial Committee.

Overview

Additional Reading