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Running head: VERTICAL VERSUS HORIZONTAL DRILLING IN SAUDI ARABIA

Comparing Well Operation between Vertical and Horizontal Drilling in Saudi Arabia
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VERTICAL VERSUS HORIZONTAL DRILLING IN SAUDI ARABIA

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INTRODUCTION
I.

BACKGROUND OF WELL OPERATIONS

A. History of Well Drilling
The history of drilling began in ancient times, about 10-20 thousand years ago when an
early man used crude tools and methods to drill stones, jewels, bones, and metals (Kopey, 2007).
It happened in many regions of Europe, Egypt, America and Asia. During this period early man
created working instruments as well as tools that were used for doing house chores. According
to Kopey (2007), the first drilling operation by the ancient man comprised of two wood rods that
were concentric and were filled with abrasive materials such as sand. The working of this
method was based on the rotary principle, in which the rotary action created pressure on the edge
of the working bit used for damaging a hole at the bottom of the drill. Water was used as a
lubricant of the drill and a coolant of the material produced from the drilling. The rotary action
was created by a manual drive in which belts were wound around the drill and rotated. A bow
having a cord was an improvement in the later years.
The first drilling rig to be developed was proposed 1000 years B.C in the old China and
comprised of a percussive cable with its skeleton made of mainly bamboo, and a large drum
(with a diameter of 5m) was used to make round trips. The drilling action of this set-up was a
result of the rocking movements created by balancing beam to generate an impulse on the bit at a
particular depth. The highest depth of the well that this first rig reached was 600m (Kopey,
2007). Other mechanisms of the drilling rig were incorporated later and included gearbox, the
hoist system, wrench, jack, and differential gear, among others. Later development of the rigs in
Holland included the use of drill bits with a spiral shape and a device that created pressure on the

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rod of the rig. With these inventions and developments, the first drilling for a deep well was done
in Baku, Azerbaidjan and output a large amount of crude oil in 1848 (Kopey, 2007).
A large number of oil companies were established and manufactured equipment to
produce petroleum, whereas the Soviet Union specialized in the manufacture of rotary drilling
rigs and initiated the pace for advancement to new technologies in the field of drilling. It resulted
in the creation of heavy rigs that drilled the deepest well that achieved a 12200m in Kola,
Peninsula (Kopey, 2007). Rotary drilling is the most used technology that was developed in 1901
(Spindletop Hill) and contained a hollow stem that allowed for broken rock and soil debris out of
the borehole while drilling (American Oil & Gas Historical Society, n.d.). Developments in
drilling have evolved from the ancient times to date in the form of rig components, mechanisms
of creating drilling impact, and the direction of drilling in different parts of the world.
B. Vertical Drilling
Vertical drilling involves boring a hole from the top of the earth surface going downward
using a drilling rig, creating a perpendicular well. The history of vertical drilling originates from
the hammering approach that used a cable as a tool to drill wells in the ancient China (used in
brine well drilling), with the first commercial vertical well drilled in 1895 in Titusville, U.S and
achieved a 65ft depth (Ma, Chen, & Zhao, 2016). This method of drilling happens by the effect
of consecutive strikes on the bottom hole by bits which crush the rock. People were the source of
power to create the motion of the rig before animals replaced them, with steam engines coming
later. The rotary principle came later in 1863 to improve the efficiency of operation of the rig,
and it is still in use as the most common one in today’s petroleum and oil industry.

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C. Horizontal Drilling
This method involves drilling a well from the surface part to regions in the subsurface
slightly above the targeted reservoir containing natural gas or oil and then deviating the bore of
the well from the vertical plane (Ma, Chen, & Zhao, 2016). A slight horizontal inclination is
created to allow the wellbore to reach the reservoir. According to Helms (n.d), the history of
horizontal drilling started in the U.S in 1981 with the patent of using flexible shafts that rotated
drilling bits. The shafts could not be bent but worked in a curvy manner that created a short
radius. With the use of this approach, the first well was drilled in Texas in 1929 and another one
drilled in Franklin Heavy Oil Field in 1944, in Pennsylvania at a 500ft depth (Helms, n.d). The
method advanced to the use of downhole motors in the drilling operation in the early 1980s when
the technology was commercialized. According to Helms (n.d), it was used by British Petroleum
in Alaska in Prudhoe Bay Field to reduce the amount of gas and water produced during drilling.
II.

FINANCIAL IMPACT

A. Cost of Drilling well
The cost of oil and gas production for horizontal drilling is higher than that of the vertical
drilling because operations involved in horizontal drilling are systematically many and are
demanding compared with vertical drilling. In horizontal drilling, drilling starts at the surface
like a vertical well, and it progresses until 100ft above the rock being targeted before pulling the
drill bit and attaching a hydraulic motor in the middle of the drill pipe and the drill bit (King,
2020). The drilling resumes and takes an inclined angle until the bit hits the rock. Downhole
instruments help to steer the drilling by determining the azimuth and the direction of drilling.
According to King (2020), a combination with ...