Horizontal drilling
Horizontal drilling turns a wellbore sideways within the target formation, exposing far more producing rock than a traditional vertical well.
Horizontal drilling steers a wellbore from vertical into a horizontal path once it reaches the target formation, running the lateral section for thousands of feet through the productive rock instead of just passing straight through it. Paired with multi-stage hydraulic fracturing, it exposes vastly more reservoir contact per well than a vertical well ever could, which is the core technology behind the shale boom.
Engineers who pioneered horizontal drilling in plays like the Barnett Shale describe it as the last real option left after conventional vertical wells stopped delivering acceptable returns, and note that the completion techniques used on those first horizontal wells kept evolving rapidly as operators learned what actually worked in the field.
Heard on the show
“we figured out we've got to go horizontal. That's about the only thing we can do that we haven't already tried. So myself and another engineer named Jeff Roberts, we drilled the first six Barnett shell horizontal wells”
“it's just been really exciting to be part of the industry and and really develop across the years and see the changes, you know, from vertical drilling to horizontal drilling kind of early in my career”