Conocophillips Company

Kenneth Maribu

John G Eller

Anthony Ryan

A process is described for milling a window in the casing () of an oil or gas producing well, for example in order to drill a lateral well branching off from the main well. A wireline milling tool is first used, in a relatively low cost operation, to create a small window () or notch in the casing (). Provided a small window () or notch can be created successfully, an expensive heavy duty coil tubing milling operation can then be conducted to create the full window, some 4-6 feet in length. Previous attempts to create a full window using wireline tools have encountered difficulties due to there being no circulating drilling fluid to remove metal swarf and due to the need for the tool to be supported by casing during the milling operation, when the integrity of the casing is being compromised by drilling the window. The proposed wireline tool has an actuator () with relatively small stroke length and a relatively small container () to manage the swarf produced by the milling process.

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Tananger, Norway

Kenneth Maribu