Drilling

Ductile rocks respond during drilling

Drilling is a process whereby a hole is bored using a drill bit to create a well for oil and natural gas production.  There are various kinds of oil wells with different functions:

  • Exploration wells (or wildcat wells) are drilled for exploration purposes in new areas. The location of the exploration well is determined by geologists.
  • Appraisal wells are those drilled to assess the characteristics of a proven petroleum reserve such as flow rate.
  • Development or production wells are drilled for the production of oil or gas in fields of proven economic and recoverable oil or gas
  • Relief wells are drilled to stop the flow from a reservoir when a production well has experienced a blowout.
  • An injection well is drilled to enable petroleum engineers to inject steam, carbon dioxide and other substances into an oil producing unit so as to maintain reservoir pressure or to lower the viscosity of the oil, allowing it to flow into a nearby well.

Mist Drilling

Mist Drilling

Mist drilling is used if only modest amounts of water inflow are experienced during air drilling. A small amount of water is injected into ...

Read More »

Natural Gas Drilling

Natural Gas Drilling

Natural gas drilling, like nitrogen, can be used in lieu of dry air to reduce the risk of downhole fires. However, as it is released to the ...

Read More »

Nitrogen Drilling

Nitrogen Drilling

Nitrogen may be used in place of air drilling in underbalanced drilling operations. Its major advantage is that mixtures of nitrogen and ...

Read More »

Dry Air Drilling

Typically layout of an air drilling site

Dry Air Drilling Overview Dry air drilling is an old underbalanced drilling technique used primarily in environmentally sensitive areas to prevent formation contamination. A basic air drilling surface setup is shown in Figure 1. FIGURE 1 However, effective hole cleaning is a problem with standard air drilling. The drag force on …

Read More »

Introduction to Underbalanced Drilling

Introduction to Underbalanced Drilling

This topic covers the underbalanced drilling method, which is defined as the practice of drilling a well with the wellbore fluid gradient less than the natural formation gradient. Besides minimizing lost circulation and increasing the penetration rate, this technique has a widely recognized benefit of minimizing the damage caused by …

Read More »