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An oil well is a drillhole boring in Earth that is designed to bring petroleum oil hydrocarbons to the surface. Usually some natural gas is released as associated petroleum gas along with the oil. A well that is designed to produce only gas may be termed a gas well. Wells are created by drilling down into an oil or gas reserve and if necessary equipped with extraction devices such as . Creating the wells can be an expensive process, costing at least hundreds of thousands of dollars, and costing much more when in difficult-to-access locations, e.g., oil platform. The process of modern drilling for wells first started in the 19th century but was made more efficient with advances to oil and technology during the 20th century.
Wells are frequently sold or exchanged between different oil and gas companies as an asset – in large part because during a drop in the price of oil and gas, a well may be unproductive, but if prices rise, even low-production wells may be economically valuable. Moreover, new methods, such as hydraulic fracturing (a process of injecting gas or liquid to force more oil or natural gas production) have made some wells viable. However, peak oil and climate policy surrounding fossil fuels have made fewer of these wells and costly techniques viable.
However, neglected or poorly maintained present environmental issues: they may leak methane or other toxic substances into local air, water and soil systems. This pollution often becomes worse when wells are Orphan wells – i.e., where a well is no longer economically viable, so are no longer maintained by their (former) owners. A 2020 estimate by Reuters suggested that there were at least 29 million abandoned wells internationally, creating a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions worsening climate change.
According to Kasem Ajram, petroleum was Distillation by the Persian people alchemist Muhammad ibn Zakarīya Rāzi (Rhazes) in the 9th century, producing chemicals such as kerosene in the alembic ( al-ambiq), and which was mainly used for .Zayn Bilkadi (University of California, Berkeley), "The Oil Weapons", Saudi Aramco World, January–February 1995, pp. 20–27 Arab and Persian chemists also distilled crude oil in order to produce Flammability products for military purposes. Through Al-Andalus, distillation became available in Western Europe by the 12th century.
Some sources claim that from the 9th century, were exploited in the area around modern Baku, Azerbaijan, to produce naphtha for the petroleum industry. These places were described by Marco Polo in the 13th century, who described the output of those oil wells as hundreds of shiploads. When Marco Polo in 1264 visited Baku, on the shores of the Caspian Sea, he saw oil being collected from seeps. He wrote that "on the confines toward Geirgine there is a fountain from which oil springs in great abundance, in as much as a hundred shiploads might be taken from it at one time."Tim Steil9781610606295, Voyageur Press. ISBN 9781610606295
In 1846, Baku (settlement Bibi-Heybat) the first ever well was drilled with percussion tools to a depth of for oil exploration. In 1846–1848, the first modern oil wells were drilled on the Absheron Peninsula north-east of Baku, by Russian engineer Vasily Semyonov applying the ideas of Nikolay Voskoboynikov.
Ignacy Łukasiewicz, a Polish people Magdalena Puda-Blokesz, Ignacy Łukasiewicz: ojciec światowego przemysłu naftowego, działacz polityczny i patriota, filantrop i społecznik, przede wszystkim Człowiek Ludwik Tomanek, Ignacy Łukasiewicz twórca przemysłu naftowego w Polsce, wielki inicjator – wielki jałmużnik. Miejsce Piastowe: Komitet Uczczenia Pamięci Ignacego Łukasiewicza. 1928 pharmacist and petroleum industry pioneer drilled one of the world's first modern oil wells in 1854 in Poland village Bóbrka, Krosno County Warsaw University timeline , and in 1856 built one of the world's first oil refinery.
In North America, the first commercial oil well entered operation in Oil Springs, Ontario in 1858, while the first offshore oil well was drilled in 1896 in the Summerland Oil Field on the California Coast.
The earliest oil wells in modern times were drilled percussively, by repeatedly raising and dropping a bit on the bottom of a cable into the borehole. In the 20th century, cable tools were largely replaced with rotary drilling, which could drill boreholes to much greater depths and in less time. The record-depth Kola Borehole used a mud motor while drilling to achieve a depth of over .
Until the 1970s, most oil wells were essentially vertical, although Lithology variations cause most wells to deviate at least slightly from true vertical (see deviation survey). However, modern directional drilling technologies allow for highly deviated wells that can, given sufficient depth and with the proper tools, actually become horizontal. This is of great value as the reservoir rocks that contain hydrocarbons are usually horizontal or nearly horizontal; a horizontal wellbore placed in a production zone has more surface area in the production zone than a vertical well, resulting in a higher production rate. The use of deviated and horizontal drilling has also made it possible to reach reservoirs several kilometers or miles away from the drilling location (extended reach drilling), allowing for the production of hydrocarbons located below locations that are difficult to place a drilling rig on, environmentally sensitive, or populated.
With the interplay with many of the elements in a well's design, trajectories and designs often go through several iterations before the plan is finalized.
With these zones safely isolated and the formation protected by the casing, the well can be drilled deeper (into potentially higher-pressure or more-unstable formations) with a smaller bit, and then cased with a smaller size pipe. Modern wells generally have two to as many as five sets of subsequently smaller hole sizes, each cemented with casing.
This process is all facilitated by a drilling rig, which contains all necessary equipment to circulate the drilling fluid, hoist and rotate the pipe, remove cuttings from the drilling fluid, and generate on-site power for these operations.
In a cased-hole completion, small perforations are made in the portion of the casing across the production zone, to provide a path for the oil to flow from the surrounding rock into the production tubing. In open hole completion, often a 'sand screen' or 'gravel pack' is installed in the last-drilled but uncased reservoir section. These maintain structural integrity of the wellbore in the absence of casing, while still allowing flow from the reservoir into the borehole. Screens also control the migration of formation sands into production tubulars, which can lead to washouts and other problems, particularly from unconsolidated sand formations. After a flow path is made, acids and fracturing fluids may be pumped into the well to fracture, clean, or otherwise prepare and stimulate the reservoir rock to allow optimal production of hydrocarbons into the wellbore. Usually the area above the producing section of the well is packed off inside the casing, and connected to the surface via a smaller diameter pipe called tubing. This arrangement provides a redundant barrier to leaks of hydrocarbons as well as allowing damaged sections to be replaced. Also, the smaller cross-sectional area of the tubing gives reservoir fluids an increased velocity to minimize liquid fallback that would create additional back pressure, and shields the casing from corrosive well fluids.
In many wells, the natural pressure of the subsurface reservoir is high enough for the oil or gas to flow to the surface. However, this is not always the case, especially in depleted fields where the pressures have been lowered by other producing wells, or in low-permeability oil reservoirs. Installing a smaller diameter tubing may be enough to help the production, but artificial lift methods may also be needed. Common solutions include surface pumpjack, downhole hydraulic pumps or gas lift assistance. Many new systems in recent years have been introduced for well completion. Multiple packer systems with frac ports or port collars in an all-in-one system have cut completion costs and improved production, especially in the case of horizontal wells. These new systems allow casing to run into the lateral zone equipped with proper packer/frac-port placement for optimal hydrocarbon recovery.
As long as the pressure in the reservoir remains high enough, the production tree is all that is required to produce the well. If the pressure depletes and it is considered economically viable, an artificial lift method mentioned in the completions section can be employed.
are often necessary in older wells, which may need smaller diameter tubing, scale or paraffin removal, acid matrix jobs, or completion in new zones of interest in a shallower reservoir. Such remedial work can be performed using workover rigs – also known as pulling units, completion rigs or "service rigs" – to pull and replace tubing, or by the use of well intervention techniques utilizing coiled tubing. Depending on the type of lift system and wellhead a rod rig or flushby can be used to change a pump without pulling the tubing.
Enhanced recovery methods such as water flooding, steam flooding, or CO2 flooding may be used to increase reservoir pressure and provide a "sweep" effect to push hydrocarbons out of the reservoir. Such methods require the use of injection wells (often chosen from old production wells in a carefully determined pattern), and are used when facing problems with reservoir pressure depletion or high oil viscosity, sometimes being employed early in a field's life. In certain cases – depending on the reservoir's geomechanics – reservoir engineers may determine that ultimate recoverable oil may be increased by applying a waterflooding strategy early in the field's development rather than later. Such enhanced recovery techniques are often called Secondary or "tertiary recovery".
Unwanted natural gas can be a disposal problem at wells that are developed to produce oil. If there are no pipelines for natural gas near the wellhead it may be of no value to the oil well owner since it cannot reach the consumer markets. Such unwanted gas may then be burned off at the well site in a practice known as production flaring, but due to the energy resource waste and environmental damage concerns this practice is becoming less common.
Often, unwanted (or 'stranded' gas without a market) gas is returned back into the reservoir with an 'injection' well for storage or for gas reinjection the producing formation. Another solution is to convert the natural gas to a LNG fuel. Gas to liquid (GTL) is a developing technology that converts stranded natural gas into synthetic gasoline, diesel or jet fuel through the Fischer–Tropsch process developed in World War II Germany. Like oil, such dense liquid fuels can be transported using conventional tankers for trucking to refineries or users. Proponents claim GTL fuels burn cleaner than comparable petroleum fuels. Most major international oil companies are in advanced development stages of GTL production, e.g. the Pearl GTL plant in Qatar. In locations such as the United States with a high natural gas demand, pipelines are usually favored to take the gas from the well site to the end consumer.
While the location of the well will be a large factor in the type of equipment used to drill it, there is actually little downhole difference in the well itself. An offshore well targets a reservoir that happens to be underneath an ocean. Due to logistics and specialized equipment needed, drilling an offshore well is far more costly than a comparable onshore well. These wells dot the Southern and Central Great Plains, Southwestern United States, and are the most common wells in the Middle East.
At a producing well site, active wells may be further categorized as:
Lahee classification [3]
The daily rates of offshore drilling rigs vary by their depth capability and availability. Rig rates reported by an industry web serviceRigzone – Rig day rates : http://www.rigzone.com/data/dayrates/ show that deepwater drilling rigs are over twice the daily cost of the shallow water fleet, and rates for jack-up fleet can vary by factor of 3 depending upon capability.
With deepwater drilling rig rates in 2015 of around $520,000/day, and similar additional spread costs, a deepwater well of a duration of 100 days can cost around US$100 million.
With high-performance jack-up rig rates in 2015 of around $177,000/day with similar service costs, a high pressure, high-temperature well of duration 100 days can cost about US$30 million.
Onshore wells can be considerably cheaper, particularly if the field is at a shallow depth, where costs range from less than $4.9 million to $8.3 million, and the average completion costing $2.9 million to $5.6 million per well. Completion makes up a larger portion of onshore well costs than offshore wells, which generally have the added cost burden of a surface platform.
The total costs mentioned do not include those associated with the risk of explosion and leakage of oil. Those costs include the cost of protecting against such disasters, the cost of the cleanup effort, and the hard-to-calculate cost of damage to the company's image.
The Sage-grouse is another example of an animal that tries to avoid areas with drilling, which can lead to fewer of them surviving and reproducing. Different studies show that drilling in their habitats negatively impacts sage-grouse populations. In Wyoming, sage grouse studied between 1984 and 2008 show a roughly 2.5 percent annual population decline in males, correlating with the density of oil and gas wells. Factors such as sagebrush cover and precipitation seemed to have little effect on count changes. These results align with other studies highlighting the detrimental impact of oil and gas development on sage-grouse populations.
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