Technology Focus: Horizontal and Extended-Reach Wells (November 2020)

Abstract

This year obviously has seen tremendous changes in our industry. No one could have anticipated the pandemic that has drastically reduced oil and gas demand globally. What is almost certain is that this pandemic has triggered an acceleration of the digitalization and automation of the industry, a probable transformation of our work environment, and a possible quicker transition toward cleaner energy. If drilling an oil well still requires the physical presence of a crew, the drilling industry surprised itself at seeing that drilling activity could be operated and supported remotely and efficiently from home. More and more wells are already drilled with different levels of automation that produce fantastic and consistent performance. It is probably just the beginning. We are only now digesting the tremendous amount of surface and downhole data available in nearly real time using machine learning or physical-based models to then feed the control systems to command the machines. Our understanding of drilling with better software, instrumentation, machines, computer vision, downhole tools, and robots will continue improving the economics of horizontal wells, and the trend is set to continue. This is good news for the geothermal market, which will benefit from these overall improvements in horizontal drilling. Even though geothermal drilling in hard and hot rock is not new, with the push toward cleaner and renewable energy, many projects and studies already have begun to produce geothermal energy from oil and gas horizontal gas wells using the hot water coproduced during oil and gas production. Instead of simply reinjecting the fluids into the ground, why not extract the heat from them? Even though fluid volume and temperature require a given threshold to be economical, advances in energy-conversion systems make the approach commercially viable. Other projects consist of economically drilling multiple horizontal wells several kilometers below the surface connected by two vertical wells, circulating a geothermal fluid in a sealed pipe and creating a closed-loop system to generate large scale electricity or heat for homes or industries. There is a good opportunity for the drilling industry to leverage its technologies and processes initially developed for horizontal oil and gas wells to tap geothermal resources economically and at large scale.