Let's start off with a little oil field lesson. When we drill the lateral it is not always a perfect horizontal zone. If it was, we would say that our inclination is 90 degrees. We would continue to drill at 90 degrees of inclination for the 10,000' of the lateral. This would be in a perfect world. Since we do not live in a perfect world, the inclination is constantly changing. If the formation tends to curve upward, we would say it is something over 90 degrees (90.1, 90.2, 90.3, etc.) If it is tilting downward, we would say it has an inclination of 89.9, 89.8, etc. Usually these numbers do not go more then a full degree in either direction.
We have to keep our motor and bit going in the correct direction up and down in the lateral and keep us in the "pay zone". So if we have an up dip of 90.5 (our formation is dipping upward) and need to come up in the zone or formation, we would need our bit to travel at a 90.6 or higher. Does that make sense? If not, give me a call! ha j/k!
Well a few days ago, our dip went up dramatically and we had to come up in zone. We were having troubles coming up, so they ended up having to take extreme measures! Well..when it was all said and done, our inclination OF THE BIT was a 97.77 degrees inclination!!!! This is unheard of and got us into trouble!! I called into the office and my boss (thanks Felipe) made this for me!
Because of this super high inclination, we ended up bursting into the shale and that is not a good thing. Our office on the wellsite was very stressed out! I had to get up at 3 AM and figure out the plan forward. First, we had to run out and catch samples every few minutes to verify that we had gone into the shale. Once we did this, we then had have multiple conference calls to figure out all the options of moving ahead. It took ALL day and I was stressed to the max.
I came back into the work shack and walked by the garbage. I saw there were coffee grounds from earlier that day and a thought entered my mind. I grabbed a pinch, sneakily put them on a slide, and pretended to freak out when I looked at them under the microscope. I had my night hand "take a look" and he could not for the life of him figure out what the sample was. Like I said before, I do not love rocks, but I work with people who do. Well this particular young man does love rocks. It was so funny watching him in dismay by the fact that he did not know this rock. He used the term squishy to describe it! NEVER A DULL MOMENT WITH ME!
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