Two World Depth Records - How to Do It

American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers, Inc. This paper was prepared for the Oklahoma City SPE Regional Meeting, to be held in Oklahoma City, Okla., March 24–25, 1975. Permission to copy is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words. Illustrations may not be copied. The abstract should contain conspicuous acknowledgment of where and by whom the paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL OF presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request to the Editor of the appropriate journal provided agreement to give proper credit is made. provided agreement to give proper credit is made. Discussion of this paper is invited. Three copies of any discussion should be sent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers office. Such discussion may be presented at the above meeting and, with the paper, may be considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines. Abstract Through the use of the most up-to-date drilling technology, Lone Star Producing Company set two drilling depth records below 30,000 feet back-to-back. The two wells, the Baden Unit No. 1, southeast of Elk City, Oklahoma and the Bertha Rogers No. 1, south of Burns Flat, Oklahoma reached depths of 30,050 and 31,441 feet, respectively. Preplanning by Lone Star and the application of the technology compiled by the industry made possible the penetration of the deep Cambrian and pre-Cambrian sedimentary beds in the Anadarko Basin. These drilling efforts proved that equipment and techniques are available to drill below 30,000 feet, and penetration of porous beds below 31,000 feet confirm that reservoir rock to store and produce hydrocarbons can be expected below those depths commonly drilled to date. Various phases of the drilling operations are discussed in detail. Introduction The Anadarko Basin in Western Oklahoma and the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles has long been a challenge to the Panhandles has long been a challenge to the searcher for oil and gas. Sedimentary beds overlie basement rocks from a depth of 40,000 feet along the axis of the basin syncline to a depth of less than 4,000 feet over the shallow shelf areas of northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas. Because of the very thick sedimentary beds in the deeper part of the basin, the drilling depth record part of the basin, the drilling depth record and/or its producing depth record has been set in this basin several times. Most recently two wells have been drilled below 30,000 feet to hold the present record of the "Worlds Deepest Wells." The stratigraphic section penetrated in the basin is characterized by unconformities at the top and base of the Pennsylvanian and Mississippian Age rocks.