Horizontal Drilling

Geo-Pilot® Rotary Steerable System from Halliburton
Oklahoma Energy Resources Board has a video that gives a good overview of horizontal drilling and fracturing techniques. YouTube  has several videos on the same topic, but their audio tracks are either A) non-existent, or B) overfull of emotional drivel. The video from Halliburton (above) covers just the drill motor.

There are two kinds of horizontal drilling:

• the kind used for drilling oil and gas wells, and
• the kind used for near-surface construction projects, where a pipe has to be installed beneath an existing structure.

We are talking about the first kind here. Inspired by Comrade Misfit and a Bloomberg Businessweek article about oil production, prices and what they are doing to the Russian economy. The Bloomberg article mentioned horizontal drilling, which I had never heard of being used for oil. I had heard of directional drilling, which has been a bit of a mystery. This video helps clear it up a bit.

Conventional well drilling is done by turning the whole drill stem, much like you use an electric drill to turn a drill bit to drill a hole in a piece of wood. For directional drilling, which includes horizontal drilling, the drill pipe does not turn. It is used to conduct high pressure fluid to a hydraulic drill motor on the end of the drill string. (Drill string is the term for all of the sections of pipe strung together.)