Technology developments in wellhead systems bring greater efficiency and safety to drilling applications

摘要

Much has heen written about the shale boom that began more than a decade ago in the U.S.A combination of favorable oil prices,technological innovations and a growing global demand for energy helped the E&P industry turn shale into an economically favorable source of vast volumes of oil and gas production.The traditional drilling techniques since the early 19th century-such as drilling vertical wells into conventional oil-rich reservoirs across the U.S.-often left large volumes of recoverable oil and gas in the formation,due to limited connectivity.Additionally,the depletion of these conventional reservoirs over the decades raised the industry demand for greater technology innovations-a demand that was met with the development of horizontal drilling technology,hydraulic fracturing completions and multi-well pad drilling for unconventional reservoirs.As they explored and tested these advancements in their shale wells,operators began to push their well construction operations to new limits.The drilling of longer laterals became the norm,bringing with it vastly improved recovery rates and the ability to drill and produce a single zone more effectively.