Saudi Aramco has announced that its Manifa Drilling Team set a new record in December when it finished drilling the longest well in Saudi Arabia to a total depth of 32,136 feet (around 9.8 kilometres) and completed a horizontal power water injector across the Lower Ratawi reservoir situated in the Partitioned Neutral Zone between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
A Precision Drilling rig did the work on the Manifa well, exceeding the company drilling progress KPI by more than 32 feet per day and beating the lost-time KPI by nearly 3.5%. The same drilling team set an earlier record while working on the 30,850 feet (around 9.4 kilometres) Manifa well.
Discovered in 1957, Manifa field is in shallow waters southeast of Tanajib, about 200 kilometres northwest of the east coast city of Dhahran.
The development strategy of Manifa is based on optimum use of onshore drilling. Instead of developing Manifa completely from offshore platforms, it is developed from 27 drilling islands connected by a 47 kilometre long causeway, in addition to 16 onshore drill sites and 13 platforms.
Extended-reach wells, such as the two mentioned are required for optimum field coverage.
During a recent recognition ceremony at the rig site, Drilling general manager Ibrahim Assaadan and Northern Area Oil Drilling Department manager Khalid Al-Abdulgader expressed appreciation to the drilling team for their efforts in achieving the remarkable record, and they expressed their confidence that the team will sustain the outstanding performance in delivering other record wells in the future.
Manifa team members gave several reasons for the success, the use of high-torque drill-pipe connections, optimised well trajectory, proactive involvement of support personnel, round-the-clock support and comprehensive preplanning as well as intensive communications among all involved.
