Drilling Technology

Under construction - Michael Aouad

Timing:

• 1928 Portable Offshore Drilling: Texas oilman Louis Giliasso creates an efficient portable method of offshore drilling by mounting a derrick and drilling outfit onto a submersible barge. The transportable barge allows a rig to be erected in as little as a day, which makes for easier exploration of the Texas and Louisiana coastal wetlands¹.
• 1928 First recorded true horizontal well drilled near Texon Texas².
• 1944 Horizontal well drilled at 500 feet in the Franklin Heavy Oil Field, Venango County, Pennsylvania².
• 1947 First commercial oil well out of sight of land: A consortium of oil companies led by Kerr-McGee drills the world’s first commercial oil well out of sight of land in the Gulf of Mexico, 10.5 miles offshore and 45 miles south of Morgan City, Louisiana¹.
• 1955 First jack-up oil-drilling rig: The first jack-up oil-drilling rig is designed for offshore exploration. The rig features long legs that can be lowered into the seabed to a depth of 500 feet, allowing the platform to be raised to various heights above the level of the water¹.
• 1980s Horizontal drilling becomes economically viable: the advent of improved downhole drilling motors and the invention of downhole telemetry equipment, made horizonntal drilling technology commercially viable¹.
• 1990s New tools and techniques to reduce the costs and risks of drilling: The combined efforts of private industry, the Department of Energy, and national laboratories such as Argonne and Lawrence Livermore result in the introduction of several new tools and techniques designed to reduce the costs and risks of drilling, including reducing potential damage to the geological formation and improving environmental protection. Among such tools are the near-bit sensor, which gathers data from just behind the drill bit and transmits it to the surface, and carbon dioxide/sand fracturing stimulation, a technique that allows for non-damaging stimulation of a natural gas formation¹.
• 2000 Hoover-Diana goes into operation: The Hoover-Diana, a 63,000-ton deep-draft caisson vessel, goes into operation in the Gulf of Mexico. A joint venture by Exxon Mobil and BP, it is a production platform mounted atop a floating cylindrical concrete tube anchored in 4,800 feet of water. The entire structure is 83 stories high, with 90 percent of it below the surface. Within half a year it is producing 20,000 barrels of oil and 220 million cubic feet of gas a day. Two pipelines carry the oil and gas to shore¹.

Footnotes

• ^{^1}[Greatest Engineering Achievements of the Twentieth Century - Petroleum Technologies Timeline]
• ²[Helms, L. "Horizontal Drilling"]