12 Mar 2014
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Horizontal Drilling Scores Big on All Fronts
posted by Unknown @ 11:42 0 Comments
Think about it like this. With new HDD technologies, no longer do huge trenches have to be dug for miles. No more stirring up toxins at the bottom of the sea, killing off countless fish and poisoning the water. Even with all these environmental advantages, still the battle to win over environmentalists has not been an easy one.
In the beginning
Things were not always so rosy for horizontal drilling
technologies. In the early days it was
considered nothing more than a gimmick and an added expense. Financially speaking, it was a long
shot. No one knew what challenges exactly
lay beneath the ground.
The basic idea of drilling sideways goes against the laws of
nature itself. It is gravity itself
working against the horizontal driller and the tunnel is always in danger of
collapsing. In fact, that’s what HDD
pros call it: tunneling. While the
concept was simple enough, bringing it to fruition was another thing entirely.
HDD professionals and their roles
While HDD professionals were hoping to win over
environmentalists, it’s proving to be a long hard road. Understandably, environmentalists are
naturally opposed to anything that increases the production of oil and natural
gas and could be harmful to the environment.
But HDD pros say it actually has the opposite effect, being much kinder
to the environment that more traditional vertical drilling.
In the early days, HDD contractors played an integral role
in the development of the new technology.
They were as important to planning as the technicians themselves. Acting a liaison between contractors and
project owners, they were the eyes and ears of the new technology itself. They were the boots on the ground, so to
speak.
The term “drilling” and its misunderstandings
When we speak of drilling, it of course brings up images of
mud and sticky oil and the huge environmental mess it must make. Nothing could be further from the truth. Fluids used in the process, sometimes
demonized as a danger to the environment, are anything but. Although sometimes called by a confusing
technical name, the real substances are sometimes no more harmful than salt
water itself.
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