47 comments on An oilfield in Arabia
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
47 comments on An oilfield in Arabia
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
Search The Oil Drum with Google
Support The Oil Drum
Recently on TOD:World
TOD:Campfire
- What "Lower Consumption" Means
- Tricking and Treating the Future
- Meeting Energy Decline Part-Way - Potatoes?
TOD:Europe
- The Future of Nuclear Energy: Facts and Fiction - Part IV: Energy from Breeder Reactors and from Fusion?
- The US stimulus and "green jobs"
- EROWI - energy return of water invested
TOD:Canada
- In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
- The Round-Up: October 24, 2008
- Compressed Air Energy Storage - How viable is it?
TOD:Australia/NZ
- The Bullroarer - Saturday 7th November 2009
- The Bullroarer - Friday 30th October 2009
- Details of Solar Flagships Released
TOD:Net Energy
Blogroll
Energy Sites
- The Coming Global Oil Crisis
- Die Off
- Dry Dipstick
- Energy Bulletin
- From the Wilderness
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Peak Oil Crisis
- Peak Oil News and Message Boards
- Powerswitch
- Rigzone
- Matthew Simmons
- Wolf at the Door
Environment & Sustainability Sites
- The Daily Green
- EcoGeek
- Eco Street
- Green Car Congress
- Green Options
- green.alltop.com
- Gristmill
- RealClimate
- Sustainablog
- Treehugger
- WorldChanging
Blogs
- The Big Picture
- Casaubon's Book
- Cleantech Blog
- Clusterf
k Nation (Jim Kunstler) - The Cost of Energy
- David Strahan
- The Energy Blog
- Entropy Production
- European Tribune
- GraphOilology
- Health After Oil
- jeffvail.net
- Mobjectivist
- Peak Energy (Australia)
- Peak Energy (USA)
- R-Squared
- Resource Insights
Finance & Economics Blogs
- Calculated Risk
- The Crash Course
- Ecological Economics
- Econbrowser
- Environmental Economics
- Infectious Greed
- The Mess That Greenspan Made
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
Organizations
Peak Oil Primers
Beware email scams!
Beware email scams claiming to be from this site. We do not have any job openings. If anyone contacts you about a job at The Oil Drum, do not reply to them, and definitely do not give them any personal information or send them money. Read more here.
“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”
—Gandhi
User login
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
Personnel
- Editors: Nate Hagens, Gail the Actuary, Prof. Goose
- DrumBeat Editor: Leanan
- Contributors: ace, Engineer-Poet, Heading Out, jeffvail, JoulesBurn, Sam Foucher, Robert Rapier
- TOD:Campfire: Glenn, Jason Bradford
- TOD:Europe: Chris Vernon, Euan Mearns, Francois Cellier, Jerome a Paris, Luís de Sousa, Rembrandt, Rune Likvern, Ugo Bardi
- TOD:Canada: benk, Libelle
- TOD:ANZ: Big Gav, Phil Hart, aeldric
- Emeritus: Stuart Staniford
- Technician: Super G
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.










GAIA Host Collective
The problem is that demand is increasing a hec k of a lot quicker than supply, and these new extraction methods are a lot more expensive on a per barrel basis. I doubt that horizontal drilling can do more than slightly slow the decline rate in production. But, the techniques ought to make a lot of producers rich.
"I doubt that horizontal drilling can do more than slightly slow the decline rate in production.
Now I'm even more perplexed than before (at least pending HO's upcoming contribution, which I'm looking forward to).
So does horizontal drilling slow down or speed up the depletion rate? It can't to both at once. Or does it all depend on the characteristics of the field in question? Or does HD speed up the depletion rate but at the same time convert a certain percentage of the technically recoverable oil into economically recoverable oil?
"Grass Roots" where wells are drilled from the surface and then go horizontal. These are new field development wells where as Oilmanbob noted they wouldnt produce anything otherwise. These are drilled horizontal or they are not drilled at all.
Then there are "re-entry" wells in existing fields where a whipstock is set in an existing vertical well, a window is cut in the casing and a slimhole tool is used to drill out at a very high build rate. These in my experience are only somewhat successful in increasing production and are high risk and expensive. It requires highly skilled people and most hands decline to work these jobs simply because of the stress involved. The better people can pretty much pick and choose where they want to work now anyway.
I can't speak for what is going on in Texas but in my part of the country...the Rockies, re-entry work is very limited. Most of the work going on in the older fields is simply workover. As far as increasing depletion I don't think anyone knows at present on horizontal re-entry on old fields.
Maybe this doesnt clear this up, but to people in my business it is considered apples and oranges between these types of horizontal wells.
Smart extraction slows the decline in production by accelerating the depletion rate. (I think)
Depletion refers to the exhaustion over time of URR which is itself some percentage of OOIP.
In my text, the extraction rate is the daily flow (barrels per day) as a percentage of URR.
So, here's what I should have said.
That's better. Now all our terms are defined and there is even the possibility that we can all understand what we are talking about.
Good post and to agian plaster the same message.
In field drilling esp with advanced recovery maintains production rates but ...
Once the wells start watering out the decline rate increases over time before finally decreasing with production at a low level. The basic cause is once a region waters out it waters out several wells at once the old producers plus the new ones drilled to keep up the production rates then net effect is production rates plumment and your left with stripper wells.
The unknown is what is the general production profile of these new wells how long do they last on average with a high production rate years decades ??? Assuming that the orginal drilling gave decent field coverage. My gut feeling is in field drilling only helps production rates for a few years at most esp with lateral wells since the depletion rate is doubled.
That is my thesis.