Friends and Fiends: Once the rig is on site, we spud in and open the hole... that bit is enormous. We open the hole to probably 350 to 500 feet, pursuant to local regulation to protect the water table, case, cement, and set our blow-out prevention equipment. Most rotary rigs with mud, hydraulically drill about 1000 feet a day. What an air drive can do would be interesting to know. So we should drill to TD (total depth) within a week, re-case, cement and log our well. This is the completion phase. The logging is a geo-physical examination of the well telling us where to perforate the casing to allow production of either gas or hydrocarbons. Wells flow freely, I've seen 20,000 barrels per day, but are immediately tweaked back to preserve the field. The water and gas compress the oil creating a natural flow. Pumps are only placed on fields when the forces of nature are exhausted. Once the logging and field tests are complete, the well is either declared commercial or capped. That is oil drilling in a nut-shell.
Obviously, there are a number of sub-contractors involved in the operation, even though we are drilling the well with our equipment.
