Directional Wells for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCLII

directional well

After years of scrolling through content farm rubbish, our staffers have codified the simplest method of determining that some freelancer somewhere was pounding out bullshit in hopes of collecting a few pennies for the "work." Ready? All you do is look for long strings of generic crapola tied together with tangentially related factoids. It's even easier when those factoids have been interpreted through the lens of ignorance. That's what we found when we did a deep dive on Christian Petersen and the WiseGEEK post, "What Is a Directional Well?" (firmly ensconced at AboutMechanics.com, for some weird reason).

Petersen opened his content dump with the anodyne observation that,

"A directional well is usually an oil well that is drilled into the ground in a direction that is other than vertical."

Kudos to Christian; it appears he knows how to google his topic... although that "usually" of his seems misplaced, if you ask us. A better definition would probably be "Any well that is intentionally drilled to a target that is not vertically beneath the surface location." But hey, that would require that the writer know that there is such a thing as a surface location. Not so Petersen...

We promised you bullshit and crapola, and without further ado, here's more of what Christian shared, just in his introduction:

• "Directional drilling is undertaken when the target is not situated directly below the drilling platform..." – Ummm, Christian? What makes you think all wells are drilled from a "platform"?
• "...for a variety of reasons, including a desire to preserve surface features, such as delicate terrain, various ecosystems, or historic structures." – None of our oil and gas types has ever run across direction wells intended to preserve "historic structures."
• "It is sometimes useful to drill a directional well that targets specific underground features such as oil or gas bearing layers or zones"  – Ummm, dude, that's the reason for all directional drilling. Does Christian think people drill wells for fun?
• "...while avoiding others, such as difficult rock layers and aquifers..." – We have no idea what those "difficult rock layers" might be, nor do we know of any reason to avoid aquifers: that's what casing is for.

Moving right along, Christian shared more of his ignorance while describing the technology:

"...drilling a directional well does require specialized equipment, such as flexible pipes and specialized asymmetrical and steerable drill heads."

We suppose that "steerable drill heads" business might be Petersen's version of geosteering with a mud motor; even if directional wells were drilled for decades before the first steerable bit. And then there's this interesting construction:

"Often, a directional well begins as a standard vertical well, which, upon reaching a certain target depth, changes direction"

Gee, Christian (and "editor" Susan Barwick), didn't J-school and/or an English Lit BA teach you not to use passive voice? A well doesn't begin anything or change direction, the drillers do all that. Or how about this... understatement?

"Most directional well drilling is done by the oil and natural gas industries, but other directional wells are sometimes constructed, especially when drilling for water or exploration."

Which raises the eternal question, exploration for what? Looking for Dr. Livingston? Besides which, exploration wells are generally vertical; it's the production wells that are drilled directionally. And finally, there's this bit of dumbassery:

"Much information about the interior of the Earth can be learned by using technology such as ground penetrating radar..."

We're duty-bound to let Christian's readers know that ground-penetrating radar isn't much use for learning "Much information about the interior of the Earth," since the technology rarely penetrates more than ten feet below the surface.

Such is the typical level of knowledge shared by a freelancer blathering on about a subject he or she had never heard of before. You know, like our Dumbass of the Day expounding on deviated wells without knowing the slightest bit about the technology and methodology. Feh.

SE - OIL