Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC, formerly Japan National Oil Corporation) has been conducting surveys on trends of latest technology related to oil & gas development for more than 40 years, based on requests from Japanese oil companies and service companies. These surveys include “Offshore drilling” in the 1970s, “Deep drilling” and “Deep-water drilling” in the 1980s, “Horizontal drilling” and “Slim hole drilling” in the 1990s, and “Extended reach drilling”, “Casing drilling”, “Managed pressure drilling” in the 2000s.

This paper introduces the outline of the related surveys, and we will also present the trends of research and development for oil and gas drilling implemented at Technology Research Center (TRC).

The well trajectory in Oil & Gas industry has been getting more and more complex since rotary drilling became a common solution. In order to satisfy the industry needs to drill further and deeper wells, the various downhole tools were developed. Rotary Steerable System (RSS), Measurements While Drilling (MWD) and Logging While Drilling (LWD) are particularly innovative technology in the directional drilling application. The new technology development has been slowing down drastically due to the downturn which began in 2014, however, the technology integration and IT technology development has made another wave of technology innovation in the drilling industry today.

This paper reviews the technology transition focusing on directional drilling and the related downhole tools, and discusses the outlook of future technology in the drilling industry.

Although ultra-deep and ultra-high-temperature drilling projects such as Kola superdeep borehole, German KTB project and Kakkonda WD-1a deep geothermal drilling were implemented in the past, such challenging drilling projects seemed to disappear for the last 10 to 20 years. In this paper, the past ultra-deep and ultra-high-temperature drilling projects and the associated technology developments, and the national project on supercritical geothermal system development just started this year are overviewed.

Wellbore instability is the largest source of trouble in drilling, affects waste of huge time and overall costs during drilling. Studies indicate that unforeseen event relating to wellbore instability account for more than 10-20% of well costs, with estimates over US $1 billion in annual cost to the industry. And, 90% of the wellbore instability mainly occurs in shale and mudstone, which represent 75% of formation in oil and gas wells.

Therefore, drilling fluid company has been introducing various materials as a composition of drilling fluid for shale inhibition for over 100 years. New technologies has been continually developed or applied, after refining existing technology.

Author look back on a long history of drilling fluid technology related to shale inhibition as a measure of forecasting the future direction of same technology.

There are three types of offshore drilling rigs: Drillship, Semi-submersible, Jack-up rig.

As the generation of rig progressed, the operating water depth had deepened and consequently the ability of drilling equipment, redundancy and on-board capacity, had been enhanced.

The technological evolution of drilling rig made the hull and drilling equipment greater in size, which enabled deeper operation and that also led to considerable improvement in performance of major drilling equipment.

Looking back the progress of element technology in the past, we'll look into the latest specifications as of now and predict the rig of the future.

The D/V Chikyu greeted 11 years operation in 2016. Chikyu expeditions were always targeted to the most challenging and extreme areas which never experienced before. CDEX has overcome technical difficulties caused by the deep water, high current, high temperature and the deep drilling, and achieved world scientific and technical outcomes. This paper look back the establishment of the CDEX operation scheme from the early stage and the technical experiences of the Chikyu's deep sea drilling for 11 years. CDEX would continue to challenge to the new era of the next 10 years.

Well completions are essentially the interface between hydrocarbon bearing formations and surface production system. Oil and gas production and well productivity are strongly affected by the choices of well completions whose design is based on various geological and operational parameters such as reservoir rock types, formation strengths, reservoir fluids, and project economics. Although the well completion technology has been continuously evolving to intelligent well systems, multi-stage stimulation systems, multilateral completions and various sand control techniques for the last few decades, many operators are still struggling from specific reservoir challenges experienced in various fields. This paper reviews two field case examples, discusses technical challenges encountering in different types of reservoirs, and identifies the needs for further improvement in well completion technology.

A giant oil field has been producing since 1982 and is located offshore Abu Dhabi. This field stretches over some 1200 square kilometers, consists of three main reservoirs, namely Reservoir A, B and C and is one of the largest oil fields in the world. The original field development was based on pattern water flooding. This was implemented in conjunction with horizontal drilling from Well Head Towers (WHT's) as well as applying dual completion systems including Multi-Lateral Completions (MLC). However, concerns for the aging problems in existing production facilities and wells were raised in the second half of 2000's. This led to enhancing the creation of an alternative field development strategy to reduce the field development cost and make further improvement on the productivity and recovery by applying the concept of Maximum Reservoir Contact (MRC). At present, the strategy is executing while utilizing artificial islands newly constructed as drilling/production centers together with the application of extended reach drilling and completion technologies.

The beginning of JAPEX Yufutsu (in Hokkaido) Oil & Gas Field development was the success of the exploration well “Minami-Yufutsu SK-1” approximately 30 years ago during 1988 to 1989, while Katakai (in Niigata) Gas Field development started earlier than that and about 40 years ago when the exploratory well “Katakai SK-8” succeeded in 1978. In both fields, drilling days have been drastically shortened by introducing new technologies to improve drilling rate and maintain well stability, and the optimization of casing programs. Also, reservoir contacts have been maximized by drilling high angle deep wells, horizontal wells, and branch wells, and the choice of production cementing slurries has been changed in order to achieve well integrity throughout the well life cycle.

This paper introduces the history of JAPEX's drilling technologies focused on deep exploration of Yufutsu and Katakai Field.