Внедрение метода кустового бурения на Западном Урале как начало технико-экономической революции в мировом бурении

Abstract

In 1943, at the height of the Great Patriotic War, the new revolutionary drilling technique with high efficiency was used in Krasnokamsk oilfield of Molotov (Perm) Oblast for the first time in the world – the cluster turbodrilling method. The development of oil industry in Prikamye in the 1940s was associated with certain complications. The main deposits of the Krasnokasmk oilfield discovered before the war turned out to be located due to a number of reasons within the area of industrial and residential construction of the city of Krasnokamsk and under the Kama river and the Paltinskoye swamp close to the city. Conventional drilling methods could not be used for their development. The way out was to use the method of directional drilling that was little known at that moment. The development of the innovative technology in Krasnokamsk oilfield in 1942 was largely due to the involvement of the specialists of the Experimental Turbodrilling Bureau evacuated from Baku. Directional drilling which involved the deviation of the bottom hole (the ultimate lowest point of the well) from the wellhead (the initial uppermost location) by several hundred metres opened up broad opportunities for developing hard-to-recover oil deposits while significantly accelerating and ensuring cost savings of the drilling process. The directional drilling served as the basis for the development in Prikamye of an advanced technology of cluster drilling when several directional wells with different azimuths were drilled from a small well pad. In 1943–1944, cluster drilling was tested and successfully used in Krasnokamsk oilfield. The cluster drilling comprised an entire range of innovative solutions including the movement of assembled drilling rigs without dismantling power equipment. Also, it resulted in the reduction of total labour costs, scope of construction and assembly works, costs of building oilfield roads, power lines and pipelines, and transportation costs. People’s Commissariat of Oil Industry of the USSR initiated a large-scale rollout of the advanced method of cluster drilling in the largest oil-producing regions of the Soviet Union – Azerbaijan and the North Caucasus, and the area of the “second Baku” – Bashkiria, Tatary, and Kuybyshev oblast. The transition to the advanced and cost-saving technology of cluster drilling laid the foundation for the technical and economic revolution of the world drilling practices.