Gardes drilling redefines improved recovery. (Gardes Directional Drillers introduces a new technique in horizontal drilling; obtains patent on the technique)

A Louisiana-based directional and horizontal drilling company is seizing myriad opportunities in "high-tech" improved oil and gas recovery.

Under the leadership of Bob Gardes, a veteran of 18 years of onshore and offshore directional drilling, Gardes Directional Drillers, Lafayette, is ready to make the leap from the conventional to the exotic with its patented "horizontal radial" drilling technology.

Gardes says radial drilling is a combination of oil mining and horizontal drilling. However, instead of digging tunnels, Gardes drills a horizontal wellbore, out of which it then drills shoots in whatever direction necessary to optimize production.

In addition to heavy oil recovery from gravity drainage, Gardes sees applications for the technology in such other areas as mechanical fracturing; stacked pay zones; shallow, pressure-depleted zones; fractured formations; tight sands; coalbed methane sands; and for hydrocarbon storage, solution mining and …