New radial drilling technologies

The new radial drilling technology provides an economic and high-efficiency method to recover remaining hydrocarbonresources from low permeability, high viscosity, mature oilfields, marginal oil and gas. Compared with the initial technology, withoutcasing milling and borehole enlargement, the new one improves the operating efficiency sharply. It cuts holes 100 m horizontally intothe prospective producing formation with a 50 mm diameter. The vertical depth of the well in operation reaches 3592.5 m. In this paper,the principle, equipments and processes of the new radial drilling technology are presented, the application of the technology to the lowpermeability well, the low productivity well, the high viscosity well and the well under secondary development is discussed. In addition,some problems of the technology in field application and the development trend are proposed.