WorldWide Drilling Resource

Comments from the Drilling Industry Comments from those in the industry are especially interesting to our subscribers worldwide. Here’s another for your enjoyment. A dear friend wrote about an expe- rience he is having and thinking back to many years ago, which he nearly forgot until he read the article in the November 2011 issue of WorldWide Drilling Resource ® by Ray McLarty. Seems he is busy trying to resur- rect a 60-year-old well that hasn’t been operational for three decades. He believed, at the time, he was getting ever closer to getting down to the water. The important part of this is, he is “digging” it by hand! The well is only 40 feet deep, so he can manage that, despite the teasing moments it pres- ents him all the time! As with so many old or ancient wells, there is no history to work from, as the documents no longer exist, if there ever were any. So he continues working “by hand” on that old well. Now onto the incident he will never forget. Have you ever seen that milky substance in the water that doesn’t exist in any nearby wells? It made him get down to the water and try a hard and thorough development. He used a larger than normal aperture to pull in the next size sand and thereby lessened the friction, but would still leave a good bridging effect - or so he thought at the time. On top of the sand, was a clay type substance which seemed to be rather “flaky”. While he was pumping the water out, it developed a milky color. Later he felt that in bringing “through” the larger sized sand, the aquifer itself dropped, leaving a gap between the 71 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® MAY 2013 Send your deals to: promotions@ worldwidedrillingresource.com Glen Campbell of Lorenzo, Texas, shakes the hand of James Laurent fromSEMCO, Inc. of Lamar, Colorado. Mr. Campbell placed the order for a SEMCO S6000 pump hoist mounted on a gooseneck trailer. WWDR photo. Deals are Made with SEMCO at TGWA 2013! top of the sand and the bottom of the flaky/clay. What apparently happened was the white clay started to fall because there was nothing holding it up. He was able to fix the matter by solid surging with ordinary household dishwashing detergent. It took a few hours, but it eventually consolidated and the water cleared up. The owner of that well had no trouble after that. He was wondering if there was any comparison with Ray’s matter and his. Have you had a similar experience you would like to share? Please send it to us.