What Is Exploration Drilling?

The use of mechanical equipment or manpower to drill the formation from the ground into a hole is called drilling. Usually refers to the drilling or drilling of large diameter water supply wells for the exploration or development of liquid and gaseous minerals such as oil and natural gas. Drilling is widely used in the construction of national economy.

The diameter and depth of the well depends on the purpose of the well and the depth of the burial of the mineral. Drilling oil,

Drilling is a systems engineering ^[2]

In recent years, the global drilling work volume has continued to increase. In 2012, the number of global drilling wells exceeded 110,000. At present, China's drilling scale has steadily ranked second in the world.
CNPC's drilling workload surpassed Canada and Russia in 2007 alone. It is worth pointing out that the current horizontal well drilling workload in the United States has exceeded the vertical well drilling volume. With the large-scale development of shale gas, the number of horizontal wells drilled in the United States increased rapidly, to 17,721 in 2012, accounting for 36.7% of the total number of wells drilled in the United States that year. It is estimated that the number of horizontal wells drilled in the United States in 2013 will be close to 20,000. Currently, most of the newly drilled horizontal wells in the United States are used to develop unconventional resources such as shale gas, tight oil, and tight gas. In 2011, nearly 10,000 horizontal wells were drilled in the harnett shale gas production area alone. In some companies and some regions, the newly drilled shale gas wells are almost all horizontal wells. Also with the large-scale development of shale gas, the number of drilling wells for horizontal wells in the United States increased rapidly, to 6 980 X 10,000 m in 2012, accounting for 60% of the total drilling footage in the United States that year. The number of rotating rigs in use for drilling horizontal wells in the United States increased rapidly, from 55 in 2000 to 1,151 in 2012, accounting for 60% of the total in 2012, up from 6% in 2000. With the advancement of technology, the drilling efficiency of horizontal wells will continue to improve. The drilling cycle and well construction cycle are expected to be further shortened. The drilling cost per unit of footage is expected to be further reduced, and at the same time, the drilling efficiency of other wells will be improved.

With the continuous increase of exploration and development workload in recent years, the drilling workload has shown a significant upward trend. CNPC's annual drilling volume has exceeded 20,000 and the footage has exceeded 4 000 X 10,000 m. The increase in workload has ensured the continuous increase in China's proven reserves and production of oil and gas. ^[3]