What is Horizontal Drilling?

An unconventional production technique, horizontal drilling solves the challenge of maximizing extracted hydrocarbons from a thin layer of hydrocarbon-rich source rock or “pay”. Conventional drilling techniques would pass the drill bit straight down through these thin layers such that very little source rock would be targeted; however, horizontal drilling allows drillers to drill down vertically to a layer of source rock and then drill horizontally for thousands of feet providing much greater exposure to the targeted resource.