Radial water jetting drilling

Radial water jetting drilling is a way to fix marginal oil well capability

which had production problem such as:

 Gas conning

 Water conning

 Heavy oil

Metods that carry out on radial drilling are; drilling on the casing wall

and continued by creating hole in the reservoir with high pressure

water jetting.

Selection well candidate

Wells that require the application of lateral water jetting drilling are:
 Marginal well with production output test below target or one with

very small influx.

 Well with decreasing production at former perforation zone or

intervals.

 Depleted well.

 Injection well on water flooding project, to increase injection rate.

This technology ca be applied as a replacement to the conventional

simulation, side-track drilling, as well as slim hole drilling that cost

more expensive.

Lateral water jetting can be applied at:

 All sedimentary rock i.e. sandstone, limestone dan dolomite.

 Naturally fractured formation.

 Laminated formation.

 Low permeability formation.

 Heavy oil producer layer.

Equipment

Principle this technology required equipment such as:

On surface: CTU (Coil Tubing Unit-Capillary Type), high pressure

pump, tank and pulling unit or work over rig.

On subsurface : deflector shoe, flexi shaft, centralizer, drilling bit, mud

motor, high pressure flexible hose and jet nozzle.

Water jetting process through coil tubing using produced water or

brines (KCl, CaCl2) to prevent swelling-clay, without circulating system

like one on conventional drilling. So mud-tank as well as mud-pit are

not necessary, that mean this is a cheap technology.

Radial Drilling Phase

There are 2 phase on radial drilling operation process:

1. Drilling on casing wall using coil tubing assembly, deflector shoe

with 90o angle, fully equipped with centralizer, mud motor and

7/8” inch drilling bit. This tiny size bit will drilled through and

pierced casing wall in a quick manner during one hour. Rotation

of bit assisted with mud motor that twitch by the water jetting
 power on pressures up to 3000 psig. The hole on casing wall

could up to 7/8” inch. After casing wall drilling process is over

coil tubing assembly are pulled off.

2. Running coil tubing assembly with the assembly composition

i.e. flexible hose and jetting nozzle 5/8” inch, that will pierce

formation with high pressure water jetting. Rock will become

finest cutting. These cutting will be transport to the surface,

when the well is producing oil.

The process could be illustrated by the figure below

Operation phase 1, 2 could be done repeatedly appropriate with lateral

drilling target. The direction of hole is creating by spinning the

deflector shoe. Penetration distances with water jetting could be up to

350 ft/100 mtr deep through the reservoir. Diameter of lateral hole

could up to 2” inch, with the result of increasing horizontal

permeability that ensued increasing fluids influx from the reservoir to

the well, and well production will raise too. Lateral hole could be made

to the 4 different directions, with vertical differences distances only

several inches. Cabin coil tubing unit also function as control room, in

which there installed console monitoring to expose parameters a.l.:

surface working pressure, nozzle depth penetration, water jetting rate,

water tank volume, etc.