Drilling of horizontal wells

Preconditions

Extensive horizontal wells could open access to huge hydrocarbon reserves, but there are a lot of difficulties associated with drilling and exploitation. First of all, these difficulties are associated with the lack of global experience of such work.

Implementation

During construction of horizontal wells, problems such as drilling mud loss, caving, and debris usually arise. However, they were all resolved with a series of measures for successfully passing through difficult areas. In 17 out of 28 horizontal wells, multistage hydraulic fracturing (MSHF) with proppant agent was performed, acid MSHF was performed in 6 wells.

Result

The method allowed greatly increasing flow rates compared with traditional directional wells, while in some cases it was the only method that could involve difficult to recover hydrocarbon reserves into production effectively and economically. At present, it is planned to drill the first 1,000 m horizontal well to the productive formation, laying at a depth of 100 m vertically.