Faculty of Engineering
Petroleum Engineering Department
Drilling Engineering I
Third Stage
Lecture # 1
Introduction to Drilling
Pshtiwan Jaf 1
pshtiwan.jaf@koyauniversity.org
Introduction to Drilling
Chapter One: Introduction to Drilling:
➢ Introduction
➢ Brief History
➢ Drilling Licenses
➢ Drilling Personnel
➢ Drilling Proposal & Program
➢ Drilling Processes
➢ Drilling Wells Types
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Drilling Definition
• Drilling Engineering: is the application of science and art to drill a well or
making a hole in the ground to a certain depth economically and safely for some
purposes.
• The purposes are many and they include:
▪ Oil and gas production
▪ Water production
▪ Fluids injection
▪ Collecting earth samples
▪ Disposal of liquid wastes
▪ Disposal of gases such as CO2
• Petroleum Drilling Engineering: is the application of science and art to drill a
well or making a hole to reach the underground oil pay zones economically
and safely.
• Oil Wells: holes that are made in the ground so that oil can be taken out of it.
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Drilling History
Drilling History
• The history of oil well drilling technology is studded with the familiar names
of Colonel E. L. Drake, Captain Anthony Lucas, and Spindletop.
• However, the rapid development and commercial application of rotary
drilling in the early 1900s was preceded by the work of many individuals
from many different countries.
• The early need for water and salt prompted the Chinese to develop a
percussion-type drilling apparatus to replace the practice of digging wells by
hand.
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Drilling History
Drilling History, cont.
• While improvements were made to this concept over a long time
period, other individuals eventually conceived of methods for boring a
hole into the earth and flushing out the cuttings, as opposed-to
beating the rock into pieces and bailing out the particles.
• While the percussion, or cable-tool, method of alternately lifting and
dropping a heavy iron bit remained popular in the American northeast
for a long while, the rotary drilling rig, introduced in the American
midcontinent, gradually became the most widely used method
worldwide.
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Drilling History
Drilling History, cont.
Ancient Times
• Wells dug by hand, this practice continued in Burma until the 1900s.
256 B.C.
• Chinese use percussion drilling to drill wells for saltwater. The Chinese are credited
with developing the cable-tool principle in drilling.
• To make a hole, the rigs used a cable to which workers attached a heavy, sharply
pointed bit. Rig machinery lifted the cable and bit and dropped them. The falling
bit struck the ground with a heavy blow, punching its way into the rock.
• From time to time, however, workers stopped drilling, pulled the bit from the hole,
and removed the pieces of rock or cuttings that the bit produced. This was done using a
bailing tool.
• By 1500 A.D., it was believed that the Chinese were drilled as deep as 2,000 feet
using this method, which was used as late as the 1940s. 6
Drilling History
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Drilling History
Drilling History, cont.
1808
• Ruffner brothers of West Virginia use a
"spring pole" percussion-drilling apparatus
to "kick down" a well.
• The drillers attach a cable and bit to a
flexible sapling secured as a lever over a
fulcrum.
• After using their own weight to bend the
pole and drop the bit into the hole, they
allow the spring pole to lift the bit back up. 8
Drilling History
Drilling History, cont.
1829
Steam is used to operate improved cable tool equipment that utilizes derricks, engines,
and fishing tools to retrieve lost bits.
1844
An Englishman Robert Beart invents a drilling machine that includes a hydraulic swivel,
hollow drilling rods, and circulating fluid.
1845
A French engineer named Fauvelle drills a water well near Perpignan, France, using a set
of hollow boring rods to allow pumped water to flush excavated material from the hole.
1848
August Beer, an Austrian professor, suggests the possibility of drilling by a rotary method.
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Drilling History
Drilling History, cont.
1859
• Drake's well became the first known commercial oil well, planned and
drilled solely to search for oil in the United States.
• Using the cable-tool method, the well was drilled to a depth of 65 feet and
produced 2,000 bbl of oil in its first year.
• This small project in Titusville, Pennsylvania marked the beginning of the
Petroleum era in the United States.
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Drilling History
Drilling History, cont.
1863
• A French civil engineer named Leschot became the first person to use rotary drilling
to drill a water well.
• A rotary drilling rig turns, or rotates, a bit on the bottom, which drills and creates the
hole.
• A series of pipes are added to lower the bit to the bottom. When the bit is at the
bottom, the driller starts rotating it using a rotating machine called the rotary table.
As the bit’s teeth, or cutters, rotate over the formation, they gouge or scrape the
rock away.
• A rotary rig circulates fluid while the bit drills.
• A powerful pump can move fluid down the pipe to the bit and back through the
annulus space to the surface. At the surface, equipment removes the cuttings, and
the clean fluid is recirculated back down the pipe.
• Thus, with rotary drilling, drilling does not have to stop in order to bail cuttings. 11
Drilling History
Rotary Drilling Rig
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Drilling History
Drilling History, cont.
1869
A patent is granted on a special type of offshore drilling rig. Another inventor
receives a patent on a rotary table with a beveled gear drive.
1901
• Anthony Lucas and the Hamill brothers drill the discovery well at the Spindletop
Field near Beaumont, Texas, using rotary drilling equipment.
• This method of drilling marked as the beginning of the modern petroleum
industry.
• By 1914, 10% of all oil wells were drilled using rotary drilling.
• Today, except for special applications or the setting of conductor casing, rotary
drilling is used almost exclusively.
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Drilling History
Drilling History, cont.
• Since then there have been many major advances in the rotary drilling field.
• New technology is continually being developed to make drilling faster and safer.
• New developments in the drilling technology have allowed the drilling of horizontal
wells.
• The development of deep water drilling technology has allowed operators to develop
oilfields in very deep water in excess of 3000 meters.
• Current developments in drilling fluids have increased the rate of penetration and
allowed the development of high pressure, high temperature areas that were could not
be developed before. 14
Licenses
Licenses
• Worldwide, the ministry of oil is empowered, on behalf of the Government, to
invite companies to apply for exploration and production licenses.
• Exploration licenses do not allow a company to drill and are used primarily to
enable a company to acquire seismic data from a given area.
• Production licenses allow the licensee to drill for, develop and produce
hydrocarbons from whatever depth is necessary.
• Sometimes, the costs of field development are so great that major oil companies
have formed partnerships, known as joint ventures , to share these exploration
and development costs, e.g. Shell/Esso in North Sea field.
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Oil & Gas Field Life
Oil & Gas Field Life
• Before the exploration wells are drilled the licensee may shoot
extra seismic lines, in a closer grid pattern than it had done
previously.
• This will provide more detailed information about the prospect and
will assist in the definition of an optimum drilling target.
• Despite improvements in seismic techniques the only way of
confirming the presence of hydrocarbons is to drill an exploration
well.
• Drilling is very expensive, and if hydrocarbons are not found there is
no return on the investment, although valuable geological
information may be obtained.
• With only limited information available a large risk is involved.
• Having decided to go ahead and drill an exploration well proposal is
prepared.
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Oil & Gas Field Life
Oil & Gas Field Life, cont.
• The life of an oil or gas field can be sub-divided into the following phases:
➢ Exploration
➢ Appraisal
➢ Development
➢ Maintenance
➢ Abandonment
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Oil & Gas Field Life
Exploration Drilling
• Drilling in a land that not known to be an oil field.
• There may be a single exploration well or many
exploration wells drilled on a prospect.
• If an economically attractive discovery is made on
the prospect then the company enters the
Appraisal phase of the life of the field.
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Oil & Gas Field Life
Appraisal Wells
• More wells will be drilled to establish the lateral and vertical extent (size) of the
reservoir.
• The information provided by the appraisal wells will be combined with all of the
previously collected data and engineers will investigate the most cost effective
manner in which to develop the field.
• If the prospect is deemed to be economically attractive a Field Development Plan
will be submitted for approval to the government of State.
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Oil & Gas Field Life
Development Wells
• Sometimes called production wells.
• Many wells will be drilled and completed in proven
economic reservoir to extract hydrocarbons.
Maintenance (Workover)
• After many years of production it may be found that the field is yielding more or
possibly less hydrocarbons than initially anticipated at the development planning
stage and the company may undertake some maintenances including:
stimulation, artificial lifting, EOR…
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