Slim-hole casing program adapted to horizontal well

A type of slim-hole well design reduced the cost of drilling a horizontal well in the southern North Sea. The basic slim-hole drilling and casing program was similar to that used in conventional directional wells in the field, but with slight modifications for drilling with logging-while-drilling (LWD) tools and running production liners. Nearly 2,600 ft were successfully drilled at over 80[degree] inclination in ARCO British Ltd.'s Pickerill A6 well, the first time in the southern North Sea that a horizontal well was drilled through the reservoir without first casting off the overlying evaporite sequence. The paper describes the well design, the pilot hole plan, the evaluation program for directional drilling, a horizontal sidetrack plan, its evaluation and drilling, hole conditions, liners, well completion, and results.