Drilling practice of shale oil & gas horizontal wells with long horizontal section in the North America and its enlightenment

Under the double pressures of reducing the costs and increasing the single-well oil and gas production at low oil price, improving the length of horizontal section has already become an important breakthrough of North American shale oil and gas companies to realize cost reduction and benefit increase. North American shale oil and gas producers take a series of technological measures to increase the drilling efficiency of horizontal wells with long horizontal section and reduce the operation cost per foot, and as a result, better economic benefit is achieved. In this paper, the drilling status of shale oil & gas horizontal wells with long horizontal section in the North America were investigated, and the key drilling technologies adopted by the major oil and gas companies were analyzed, including optimized design of casing program, super-spec rigs, directional tools, drilling fluids and casing running technologies. Then, combined with the drilling status and technological demands of shale oil & gas horizontal wells in China, the suggestions for developing the drilling technologies of horizontal wells with long horizontal section were proposed, so as to provide the reference for the reserves and production increase and the cost reduction and benefit increase of domestic shale oil and gas.