How Utility Companies Can Work Faster Using Horizontal Drilling

There are currently more than 2.5 million miles of pipeline in the United States and it plays an important role in the transport of oil from coast to coast.

Before any fuel is transported via those pipelines, it must be extracted from the ground, usually through drilling and boring. In fact, horizontal directional drilling (HDD) and precision directional boring can help extract a greater value of fuel compared some of the older methods. It’s actually estimated that the global horizontal directional drilling market will be worth almost $15 billion by the year 2020.


Believe it or not, directional boring can also be used in helping to lay conduits and utilities, saving companies from having to do a lot of messy trench digging. Thankfully, precision direction boring uses HDD to predetermine where utilities are going to be placed. Directional boring doesn’t leave a mess and instead allows for much cleaner entry and exit points, which is much less invasive.

As if that wasn’t enough, boring and directional drilling also has benefits including quicker turnaround times, fewer costs, reduced disruption of the environment, better and deeper installations. It works for putting in wells too and horizontal drilling can result in wells that are three to five times deeper than wells drilled vertically.


For employees in the drilling and boring business, it’s important to have all needed tools from breakout tools to silver bullet PDC drill bits to hole openers to completion bits. With breakout tools, workers can service all of the drills in their operation. Breakout tools help in making connections between different drill pipes and breakout tools also allow for easy and quick assembly and dismantling of drill strings. Breakout tools can easily be mounted wherever they are needed as well.


There’s no doubt that precision drilling and direction boring makes installation of utilities much much easier. These processes eliminating the messy work sites often found when trenches are dug to lay utilities down and it saves workers time and frustration from having to dig wide, long holes and deal with rocks, earth and other obstacles. Armed with the right equipment—drill bits, breakout tools, etc—workers can get jobs done much faster, save money and install utilities better and deeper than by conventional methods.