From hand-dug wells to present day: the history and technology of drilling and well stimulation
| Dates: | 22 November 2018 |
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| Times: | 17:00 - 18:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, Current University students |
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| Speaker: | Professor Jonathan Craig |
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This week's AAGP speaker is Professor Jonathan Craig, Senior Vice President, Exploration Strategies & Professional Areas, ENI
The horizontal & multi-lateral wells and high-pressure hydraulic fracturing
technologies used to develop and produced from today’s ‘unconventional’ oil
and gas fields are neither new, nor ‘unconventional’. The first deliberately non-vertical
or ‘deviated’ wells were drilled in the 1930s and the first artificially stimulated (‘fractured’)
gas well was completed in the Devonian Marcellus Shale in Fredonia, New York State, in 1857.
This presentation traces the development of drilling technologies from the earliest onshore wells
pioneered by the Chinese in the 4th century BC, to the modern techniques of drilling offshore
in deep and ultra-deep water and in high-temperature/high pressure and ultra-deep subsurface
environments. It examines the progressive development of directional drilling, driven by legal
disputes over the production from adjacent oil leases in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the
establishment of horizontal drilling capabilities in the 1980s and the progressive development of well
stimulation techniques as a result of advances in explosives and weapons technologies during the
American Civil War and the subsequent two World Wars. It also addresses the development of the
revolutionary hydraulic fracturing (fracking) technology required to produce oil and gas from ultra-low
permeability reservoirs, the technical and environmental challenges of this technology and its
broader implications for future global energy supply.
Speaker
Professor Jonathan Craig
Role: Senior Vice President
Organisation: ENI
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
2.22
Williamson Building
Manchester
