Abstract
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? Horizontal and Complex-Trajectory Wells additional reading available at the SPE eLibrary: www.spe.org IPTC 10966 "Reservoir-Screening Methodology for Horizontal Underbalanced-Drilling Candidacy" by T. van der Werken, SPE, Weatherford, et al. SPE 102678 "Analyzing Under performance of Tortuous Horizontal Wells: Validation With Field Data" by M. Kerem, SPE, Shell Intl. E&P B.V., et al. SPE 101129 "Development of Small- and Medium-Sized Oil Fields Through Horizontal Wells—The Way Ahead" by R.D. Tewari, SPE, Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Co., et al. SPE 92804 "Coiled-Tubing Reverse Circulation—An Efficient Method of Cleaning Horizontal Wells in a Mature Pressure-Depleted Field" by P. Santhana Kumar, SPE, Petroleum Development Oman, et al.
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