New drilling method opens vast oil fields in US





By JONATHAN FAHEY


Wed Feb 9, 4:59 pm ET





A new drilling technique is opening up vast fields of previously out-of-reach oil in the western United States, helping reverse a two-decade decline in domestic production of crude.


[...]


This new drilling is expected to raise U.S. production by at least 20 percent over the next five years. And within 10 years, it could help reduce oil imports by more than half, advancing a goal that has long eluded policymakers.





"That's a significant contribution to energy security," says Ed Morse, head of commodities research at Credit Suisse.


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Proving, once again, that capitalism is the best economic system yet devised by man.




 

I thought that our main issue was refinery capacity.



Of course, I know jack shit about all this.

This is the same thing as the "fracking" they do with natural gas.  It can be VERY damaging to water supplies.  They basically pump a cocktail of chemicals deep into the ground and force the oil out.  It doesn't seem worth it to me.

This is NOT a new technique.

Their "new technique" is called hydraulic fracturing or... frac'ing.

*I do this and cementing for a living*

In before the next drilling ban .......

http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=1145905

Exactly how is this "VERY damaging" to water supplies? Please read below.

I cement casing and I do frac, I currently work for a handful of major companies as a contractor and have done this internationally and in every state of the USA that has oil/natural gas/methane. The surface, production, and intermediate casing strings are NOT going to let any hydrocarbons or chemicals into the groundwater system.

Perforations and Frac is done thousands of feet BELOW the water table.

You watched Gasland on HBO didn't you?

There have been dozens of documented cases of water contamination from fracking in wyoming, pennsylvania, colorado, delware, among others.  They are plentiful and easily googled.  

 

Yes of course.  I also did some additional reading.  There are a shit ton of local newspapers with folks reporting contaminated wells.  You don't need to rely on a documentary-ish film to figure it out.

 

In 1977 I was a company man on many frac jobs in South Texas, these were gas wells in tight formations.  They were not horizontally drilled wells, horizontal drilling came later but fracking is and has long been a standard technique in low permeability reservoirs.

Many companies put out gee-whiz press releases to help them promote money from investors.

"new" for use with oil, not nat gas





 

If you're so easily duped by a crapumentary like "Gasland" then there's no hope for you ..........

Water table  here is 100-200 feet.
Oil and gas wells are 1,000-10,000 feet.
Unless gravity reverses, groundwater will be fine.

this








 

Your black magic is called "NATURAL GAS MIGRATION". Think of it as a gas inside your body moving around your intestines, same principle. Frac'ing does NOT induce natural gas migration.

None of this is "new" by any stretch of the imagination.

Wells are routinely fraced.  

Horizontal drilling is nothing new.

Fracing and horizontal drilling is nothing new.

What is new is the recent hoopla about fracing by the greenies.  Let me tell you, most every new well is fraced.  And older wells, too.  If you stop fracing you will stop oil production.

Well, we might as well all get used to walking... if the government will still allow that.

Now you see just one of the reasons Florida is no help in the struggle to drill for more oil and gas and reduce our dependency on foreign oil.

LC

No, not new for oil, either.

Let's have a quick lesson on drilling and casing:

Disregard conductor casing as it only serves to prevent collapse of wellbore while initially drilling.
After the drilling rig spuds (starts drilling), the first casing string is called "Surface Casing". What exactly could the purpose of surface casing be???

Your STATE regulates the total depth of surface casing... it is usually 20% of total depth or a set depth (lets arbitrarily say 300'), whichever is greater.

Not only is Surface Casing cemented in place, but there are other casings which are MANDATORY, which are also cemented in the bore. All these casing strings are solidly cemented into each other creating one giant barrier consisting of many smaller barriers. For contamination to occur, all casing strings would have to be breached.

There is only an extremely slight chance that any contamination could ever occur from wellbore hydrocarbons entering the ground water aquifers. Water aquifers are so shallow that they do not come into contact with the zones that are frac'ed.

Why is that?

Frac'ing is only executed in hydrocarbon producing zones deep underground. The wellbore will only be perforated and frac'd where there are these HC zones. Hydraulic fracturing does indeed pump chemical systems into the earth, but only in exact areas (exact as in up to an inch of exactness).
IF there is a possiblity of contamination through hydraulic fracturing, you have the SAME possiblity of contamination from hydrocarbons NATURALLY entering the ground water as frac fluid entering the ground water.

If you still believe fracturing is evil, talk to mother nature and tell her that you are going to sue her for allowing hydrocarbons to naturally enter the groundwater.

Great job, Maleante!

LOL @ citing the EPA.  This is the same EPA that listed CARBON DIOXIDE as a POLLUTANT.  

Court cases are likely already filed to block opening that oil supply for the next 30 years, so it will not matter.

I will add that after each of the casing cement jobs there is pressure testing to ensure integrity of the cement job and formation... FIT or Formation integrity test.  This is done by applying pressure to the bottom of the drilled out casing.  In addition each annulus, that is, the gap between casings is pressure tested.  If any of those tests are lacking, remedial cementing is done to correct it.  Test charts are perserved, signed, and on record.  They will be examined by state and federal agencies.

bullshit





I have been assured 'peak oil' is here.

This is old news.  I don't see how this is anything of breaking news.  I have seen oil rigs for the past 5+ years here doing horizontal drilling with frac'ing (I live in the Bakken area).  Just last week someone was in GD wondering about getting a job in the oil field around here.  The Bakken is definitely in the boom stage, hence the reason why ND is one of the very few states that's not in the hole right now.

When are we going to start pumping dead democrats back into the ground to turn them into more oil?

Yep, Chesapeake has been doing this a while.



I'm pretty connected to the oil industry (friends and family) and just laugh whenever the 'peak oil' thing is brought up. There is more oil in the ground than most imagine. We discover more and more (and how to get to it) with each tech advancement.

I used to work for Nabors Offshore Corp.



We would run the guns down hole wood group brought the tools.

After the guns were set off (perforating the casing and punching holes into the formation).

We would have Halliburton come out with a frac boat and pump on the hole opening up the formation.



Then they would pump a type of synthetic sand into the formation which would help hold the formation open and act as a filter.



(Only have deepwater drill exp)

The west is mostly dry and water is our most precious resource.  I would bet the (new)  process will be deemed environmentally safe, whether it is or not.

Maleante's explanation and presentation of well casing protection apparently is correct.  One of the problems is that the strata is not always horizontal. Also, there are naturally formed vertical pipes or fissures.  This is more prominent on land accessible sedimentary strata rather than deep sea floor strata.  Sedimentary strata is often found with inclined layer features caused by overthrust, uplifting, faulting, slips, and erosion.  Mother nature may have isolated ground water sources from hydrocarbon sources by pressure balances and natural seals eons ago.  Hydrofracture forces can upset this balance.  Fracturing pressure may force material up the sediment layer incline to near surface outcroppings miles away and contaminate ground water there, even though the well casings are doing their job offering protection near the drill as Maleante shows.

The purpose of the FIT is so the driller knows how much pressure the formation he is entering can tolerate. This is in case he takes a kick and has to make sure that he doesn't overpressure that section while circulating out the kick and end up with an underground blow out and lose the well. This test is an absolute necessity to maintain safety. Unfortunately, in performing this test he will momentarily balloon the casing and the cement sheath around it. When he releases test pressure, the steel casing will spring back but the cement sheath will not. There will now be a micro annulus a few thousandths of an inch thick between casing and cement. It takes years, but natural gas can migrate up this micro annulus to shallow  fresh water zones.

There are special cement additives from Halliburton, BJ Services, Schlumberger, etc that will cause the cement to swell for several days after the FIT to heal this micro annulus. But few, even in the oil industry, recognize this phenomenon and so these extra cost additives are seldom specified. It is not necessary to use the additives on ever casing. Only using it in the tail slurry on the last one or two casings in the well will work as well. Unless the micro-annulus is present behind every open hole casing string in the well, migration cannot occur.

As far as frac’ing resulting in gas migration to shallow aquifers – not gonna happen.

Also – peak oil is real and it is here. Peak oil is peak PRODUCTION RATE – not running out. It occurs when the easy and fast to produce oil is about half gone. U.S. fields peaked in the 1970’s. Total world production RATE is peaking as we speak. Current poor world economy is reducing demand and temporarily masking the effects. But as the economy improves it will become obvious to even the most casual observer.

Tight gas, shale gas, and shale oil plays, even with state of the art fracturing, require drilling more wells closer together to get less oil that produces slower and become depleted in less time compared to the conventional sandstone and limestone plays we exploited in the past. These tight plays will give us huge additional reserves but will not keep the global production RATE capacity from falling. Without the ability to continuously increase energy production RATE to support an expanding world economy, economies will stagnate and then collapse. It won’t be pretty.

Your statements are very contradictory and your explanation of hydrofracturing is very oversimplified.   The method has actually been used for decades with very, very few documented environmental problems.   The difference now is that companies are drilling in libertard New York and Pennsylvania and ambulance-chasing lawyers have spread misinformation to the local population and government bureaucrats.  The Obungler administration' s anti-hydrocarbon police at the EPA have become involved and perpetuated the myths, JUST LIKE MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING.

As a geologist, I've worked on environmental projects for state agencies investigating such claims in Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado and New Mexico.  We documented groundwater chemistry prior in wells surrounding a drill sites.   In all cases, no problems were found related to drilling.  At some locations, hydrocarbon gas was already present in the shallow groundwater prior to drilling and concentrations did not increase after the well had been in production for several years.  I currently work as a petroleum geologist and have not witnessed hydrofracturing problems as you describe.  Companies will not use the method if there is a geologic setting where potential problems could exist or cause the problems alleged and perpetuated by media, lawyers and politicians with an anti-oil agenda.

I think that's the whole point. Along with this insane EPA CO² is a pollutant nonsense that is going to drive electric prices through the stratosphere.



Greenies want a massive population decrease and to force the remaining population (especially the evil over-consuming US) back to "sustainable technology" - that's a 18^th Century life (but "green" so you're always starving and cold).

bump

Well, you know you could have just stated the part in red rather than resorting to all the ugly hyperbole.  What I posted is just basic freshman geology, not contradictory , perhaps oversimplified for an advanced degreed petroleum geologist.  Where did you study?

The newest twist on well fracturing involves using LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) to fracture the wells instead of using millions of gallons of water that has to come back out of the well and dealt with.