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One major advantage of the new American Directional Drill VR-500 is that it can drill at extremely shallow depths (like zone 1 in the graphic) since the VR uses rack and pinion thrust, rather than gravity, to load the drill bit. No pay zone is off limits because of being too shallow
This graphic shows how vertical drilling (on the left) for energy will expose more feet of casing to the pay zone, when compared with straight vertical drilling (on the right). The zoom shows detail of a "frac" to open up the formation so it can exhale gas into the casing | 
