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Slide 7

First, the driller drills through all of the surface water strata, good and bad.  (This first drilling is several hundreds of feet down.  The well will be thousands of feet deep after all of the drillings are done that will create this one gas well.)

As the bit turns and grinds its way into the ground it creates “cuttings” of drilled-out rock.  In order to get the cuttings out of the way, compressed air is blown down the hollow drill pipe in the center of the hole and out through the drill bit working at the bottom.  The air then blows the cuttings up from the bottom and out of the hole.  The upward moving air also mixes with whatever good or bad water is leaking or flowing into the un-cased hole.  At the surface, the cuttings-filled air is put through a water bath.  The water bath washes the cuttings into a “drilling pit” that is full of the water used in the water bath, plus the water that leaked into the hole (and rain water).  The cuttings settle out into the bottom of the pit.

Sometimes the air and water are not dense enough to lift the cuttings.  So “soap” agents are added to the compressed air to help lift the cuttings up to the surface, and it ends up in the drilling pit.