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Gold/Mining/Energy : Strictly: Drilling and oil-field services
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To: Snowshoe who wrote (30302)10/3/1998 9:21:00 PM
From: Paul Angell  Read Replies (2) of 95453
 
Greg,

Do you mean the recent article on Coiled Tubing (CT) Drilling? This is where turbine driven drilling tools are deployed on a 2.3/8" and 2.5/8" reeled flexible steel pipe. There's a lot of horizontal slimhole re-entry wells being drilled at Prudhoe Bay with CT . I would estimate that BP and Arco are drilling in the region of 75 wells per year with CT. In fact Alaskan activity represents "state of the art" for CT drilling technology. The technique involves abandonning old gassed out wells and sidetracking off of a cement plug or mechanical whipstock. Usually a 3.5" hole is drilled for up to 2500ft outside the window of the old well. The horizontal sections are from 1000ft to 2000ft. The holes are cased, cemented and perforated. Some of these "skinny" wells have seen several thousand barrels per day oil production.

The great advantage of CT drilling is low costs. Sidetracks can be installed for $1million as compared to $2million plus for a conventional rotary rig.

They are also sidetracking wells with conventional rotary rigs and also with a technique called TTRD. Thru-Tubing Rotary Drilling. This is also cheaper than conventional drilling, where the production tubing is pulled before sidetracking, but not as cheap as CT drilling.

40% of the worlds CT drilling is in the hands of a single company, SLB through their subsidiary Dowell Schlumberger, and they are expanding their capacity quite aggressively around the globe. This is one area that is both new and relatively immune from the E&P downturn. Other big players are BJS, BHI, HAL.

Regards,

Paul.
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