Abstract: Gas drilling technology has the advantages of high rate of penetration and low drilling cost, but it also has the disadvantage that wellbore instability is prone to occur due to the lack of support. Compaction technology has the characteristic of good borehole stability and has been applied in engineering practices such as directional drilling. To address the frequent wellbore instability problem in gas drilling, it was proposed to combine gas drilling technology with compaction technology to explore the compaction-based wellbore strengthening technology for gas drilling. The principle of the compaction-based wellbore strengthening technology for gas drilling was expounded, and compaction experiments and discrete element simulations were conducted to determine the required loads under different compaction amounts. The reliability of the discrete element simulation was verified by comparing the axial forces obtained from the experiments and the simulations. The discrete element simulation technology was introduced into the study of the clay compaction process, and the variation laws of parameters such as porosity and particle velocity were analyzed. The results indicate that the compaction action can reduce the wellbore porosity and improve the degree of wellbore compaction. The compaction-based wellbore strengthening technology for gas drilling is feasible, and it has a good wellbore strengthening effect in low-strength formations such as clay.