Review of Radial Jet Drilling and the key issues to be applied in new geo-energy exploitation

With the development of global economy and industry, reducing the development cost of oil and gas resources, and seeking the relationship between the oil industry and the new geo-energy industry, is becoming a tendency of the oil industry in the next decades. Radial jet drilling (RJD) is an unconventional drilling technology to reach the sweet spots by using the high-pressure liquid jet or abrasive jet, which has been proved as a cost-effective technique. Recently, RJD technique is expected to be applied in the development of some new-type geo-energy (shale gas and geothermal). In the present paper, technique feature, advantages, and limitation of the RJD technique are summarized. The key issues, drilling performance (which is influenced by cross-impacted factors, such as the equipment parameters, extended length of laterals and the operating pump displacement) and the trajectory measuring method are also discussed. Based on the advantages of RJD technique and the solutions of the key issues, RJD could be a flexible technique in the exploitation of new geo-energy. (C) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.