This book's purpose is to describe the technical as well as
nontechnical efforts of drilling vertical and horizontal wells,
so that engineers, consultants, salespersons, roughnecks,
and the general public may read and understand what actually
happens in the field.
Many, many books have been written on petroleum engineering
and drilling techniques for vertical wells, most of
which the average oilfield hand cannot understand because
of the high-level mathematics that means nothing in the
field. Of course, all the office engineers will disagree with
that statement; however, in the field everything is much
different. Very few books have been written on horizontal
drilling and actual field problems and practices. I realized
that much of what I learned in the books did not apply to
actual field operations. Horizontal wells are "seat-of-thepants"
operations that can be drilled in a safe or dangerous
manner. You cannot drill a horizontal well with a calculator
or any books I have reviewed. New terminology in horizontal
wells has evolved, shaking up the average older oilfield
hand.