Core Drilling, The Billion Dollar Rock Sample

In this video, I take you inside one of the most underrated, high impact operations in oil and gas: coring. I call it the Billion Dollar Rock Sample for a reason. When companies are spending millions to hundreds of millions of dollars drilling wells, a core can be the difference between guessing and knowing. Coring is how we physically cut and recover a cylinder of rock from deep underground so geologists and engineers can see the reservoir with their own eyes, measure it in the lab, and calibrate every other dataset we rely on.

You will learn what a core is, how conventional coring works, what a core barrel and coring bit do, and why core recovery matters. I also explain the real reasons we core in exploration, appraisal, and development: confirming lithology, identifying pay versus non pay, measuring porosity and permeability, understanding rock fabric and heterogeneity, spotting clay streaks and flow barriers, and validating whether a reservoir can actually produce. This is the kind of information that directly affects well placement, completion design, frac planning, waterflood strategy, steam projects like SAGD, and long term field development decisions.

I walk through what happens after the core comes to surface: careful handling and depth control, detailed geological description, photography and scanning, plug sampling, and lab testing. We cover the key core analyses used to quantify reservoir quality and predict performance, including porosity, permeability, grain density, fluid saturation, capillary pressure, wettability, and special core analysis workflows that help model how oil, gas, and water move through the rock. Most importantly, I explain how we integrate core data with wireline logs, LWD and MWD, formation testing, cuttings analysis, and seismic interpretation to build a trustworthy subsurface model.

To round it out, I briefly discuss other technologies used to gather stratigraphic information while drilling and after drilling, including mud logging and cuttings, wireline logging suites, logging while drilling, image logs, formation pressure testing and sampling, and seismic tie methods like checkshots and VSP. If you are a drilling professional, a geology student, a petroleum engineer, or just curious about how we actually understand what is happening thousands of feet below the rig floor, this video will give you a clear and practical overview.

If you enjoyed this breakdown, like the video, subscribe, and turn on notifications so you do not miss the next one. Also, if you liked this topic, watch my directional drilling video next. Coring tells us what the rock is, directional drilling is how we steer the well to hit the best rock and stay in zone.

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