[dredmorbius]

Oil and gas rigs typically don't have to worry about intersecting other infrastructure.

Even then, things occasionally go awry.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Peigneur#Drilling_disaste...>

For an airport, the precision required both to not hit extant underground infrastructure and to know precisely where your newly deployed infrastructure is (for the next guy/gal to worry about) is probably a salient concern.

I'm not sure that horizontal drilling offers that degree of precision and assurance as opposed to rip-and-dig methods.

[defrost]

If you're not sure then you might like to forget about oil and gas drilling and look to suburban optic fibre cable laying in which a cable can be accurately laid following a curving S path about the countours of a curving road avoiding other known pipes over distances of 500+ m.

[dredmorbius]

Thanks.

Any references / sources on that?