Coil tubing in high demand

“For coil tubing services, you have a pipe coiled on a reel and you unwind the pipe into the well and use it to pump in fluids or gasses. It is quite a versatile tool and as more and more wells are drilled horizontally the traditional way of conducting service operations does not work because you lose the gravity when you are in a horizontal well.

When you are in a vertical well you have 8,000 feet of pipe or wire above you, so you have gravitational forces that you can play with, but when you are in a horizontal situation all your tool string is laying on the ground, so you lose the benefit of gravity, that is where coil tubing comes in,” said Al Alawi.

As more wells are being drilled horizontally in the Middle East region, more oil companies require coil tubing services for those wells.

Horizontal wells are drilled because of the way oil is laid down and formed in horizontal layers.

Traditionally a well is drilled vertically, but this only intersects the 20-30 feet of the oil zone, however, if the well is drilled horizontally the shaft can go further into the oil zone and extract more oil. The oil also flows under less pressure when the well is horizontal, so it is also good for reservoir management.