This post represents two milestones for WUWT.
1. It is the first post where a detailed examination of fracking has been offered to the readers.
2. It is the first post I’ve authored from an airplane cruising about 35,000 feet enroute from Atlanta to Phoenix. I’m connected to Southwest’s new inflight WiFI service. Mr. McClenney sent me this post just as I was about to board and I emailed back that I wouldn’t be able to get to it for hours. And then I discovered this new miracle of technology. Here’s my view just before posting:
Guest post by William F. McClenney
I had occasion recently to watch several presentations on environmental aspects of hydraulic fracturing at the world’s largest oil and gas industry conference. To this day I remain dumbfounded as to why the argument I am about to present here has never been mentioned before (at least to my knowledge).
It is fundamental to all arguments which attempt to deal with the effects of oil and gas development to consider the initial discoveries of petroleum: seeps. Seeps are natural leaks from traps where migration of hydrocarbons have accumulated predominantly in reservoir rocks in the subsurface. These seeps represent leakage of these trapped hydrocarbons along predominantly fractures and faults, and to a lesser extent other pathways (such as unconformities etc.). (For a basic video see: http://wn.com/oil_trap)
Until the past decade or so, the search for these traps has been the focus of the O&G industry since its inception. Reservoir rocks are those rocks which have facilitated this migration through the provision of porosity and permeability necessary to allow the movement of fluids and gases derived primarily from the maturation of hydrocarbons most commonly derived from source rocks such as shales and mudstones which lie beneath them stratigraphically. Perhaps the most common reservoirs are sandstones.
Let me repeat that, the source rocks almost always lie beneath the reservoir rocks.
The other necessity for a reservoir rock to be a reservoir rock is a top seal or rock of low to minimal porosity and permeability (often also shales), sometimes in association with a structural discontinuity, such as a fault or anticline, which prevent the majority of the migrated hydrocarbons to keep migrating towards the surface. Stratigraphic traps, which also require a top seal rock, are also targets, such as conversion of limestone to dolomite through the addition of magnesium rich fluids which ideally can result in creation of up to 11% porosity in the dolostone. Where the updip limit of this conversion occurs defines the limits of the stratigraphic traps.
http://www.geo.wvu.edu/~jtoro/petroleum/Review%202.html
So traps, however they were formed, are the key to comprehending not only how economic accumulations of hydrocarbons occur, but also the how and why you literally cannot get here from there with hydraulic fracturing.
http://www.geo.wvu.edu/~jtoro/petroleum/Review%202.html
http://www.geo.wvu.edu/~jtoro/petroleum/Review%202.html
Let’s start with hydraulic fracturing itself. This only recently impinged on the popular consciousness and is therefore “new”. To the petroleum or gas geologist, these arewere new techniques to increase porosity and permeability beginning in the 1960s, with their initial use in the reservoir rocks in mostly vertical wells. Read reservoir rocks, not top seal or much lower source rocks. “New” must therefore encompass the massive use of this technique for over half a century in strata which overlie the source rocks, and in just about every known oil or gas field in the world.
Combine source, reservoir and top seal and you have what we call a “petroleum system”.
http://www.geo.wvu.edu/~jtoro/petroleum/Review%202.html7
Oddly, use of hydraulic fracturing for the last half-century in the reservoir rocks has not caused a groundwater problem anywhere I am aware of. Those of you that can provide examples of where this half-century of intense reservoir hydraulic fracturing has caused drinking water aquifer impacts please chime in.
But the game changed ever so slowly with the development and evolution of directional drilling into steerable horizontal drilling now all the rage. The horizontal evolution spanning mostly just the last decade or so.
What this means is that for the most part, we are now targeting for the first time the source rocks themselves. What that means is we are now going after the much lower, stratigraphically, tight organic source shales etc. This could be the end game for petroleum and gas exploration, for once we have exhausted the source rocks……………..
So here is what has been missing entirely (from what I can tell) from the present “hot” discussion on fracking. So think “source rock”. Lying beneath the reservoir rocks, where fracking has been going on extensively for decades. Now add in horizontal drilling, sometimes for miles away from the drillpad in several directions. As they are “fracked”, enormous lift, on the order of maybe millimeters to maybe inches or possibly a few feet occurs to open up pathways for migration of the hydrocarbon load towards the horizontal well(s).
Do you realize what this means? It means that there is a definite possibility that such radical lifting and fracturing of the source rocks has a very slight possibility of increasing what for tens to hundreds of millions of years was already the natural seeping of hydrocarbons from the source rocks into the reservoir rocks!
Do you realize what that means? That means that meager induced releases of new hydrocarbons from the surfaces of the source rocks could actually “get on the freeway” of the reservoir rocks where they could mischievously, eventually, make their way into the structural and stratigraphic traps where they could literally be “stuck” under the top seals or structural seals, at least until removed by say existing oil field wells in the reservoir rocks, or egregiously eke their way through the labyrinthine natural plumbing of the natural seeps to say drinking water aquifers.
Imagine even a few feet lifting from hydraulic fracturing in the source rocks propagating all the way through the reservoir rocks, literally blasting past all the hydraulic fracturing maybe occurring there for decades before, and even more powerfully fracturing not only the top seal rocks but the miles of sediments and beds above. Very, very impressive, if we could only do it…….. A nuclear test might, repeat might, crack the entire stratigraphic section to1 the surface a mile or two above it, but not much else is likely to.
http://maps.unomaha.edu/maher/GEOL1010/lecture18/lecture18.html
For oil and gas, the migration process could be considered “fast” geologically, perhaps taking from tens of thousands to tens of millions of years to occur due to the density drive which allows crude and gas to “rapidly” migrate into the reservoirs above the formation water. You know, oil floats on water, and so on.
Seismic section image off the coast of California showing sedimentary layering, faults, and other geologic features. Some of the features, especially in the deeper and lower parts, are artifacts of the imaging technique, and it is helpful to be trained in the interpretation of seismic sections. This type of data is crucial and common in oil exploration. Note the vertical scale of depth. Image source: http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/mapping/csmp/data_collection.html
But the fate of the myriad chemicals being employed in today’s hydro-fracturing
regimes is not so sublime. What would drive these chemicals even into the culminations of the structural or stratigraphic traps? Most are water based solutions, with water starting out with a slight density advantage to say salt water (most connate waters are salty, surface seawater today ~1.025 specific gravity), that is until you dissolve said myriad chemicals into them, when the density drive case gets rather murky at best for water-based chemical fracking fluids, if not strongly negative (specific gravities being greater than 1.0).
Shoot these out into the connate water parts of the oil/column/reservoir rocks and voila, there you have it! They might be denser than even the connate waters, but unlike oil, they will dissolve and disperse. Whereas we have natural oil seeps above many known oil finds, we don’t often find brine springs. Why? Well oil is generally lighter than water (gas dramatically lighter) so it floats. If fresh water can “float” atop the denser warm Gulf Stream waters of the Atlantic, and shut down its circulation (according to many), how is this denser, salty or chemically laden, probably denser formation and frack water supposed to rise up, undispersed, through the top seal and structural traps, cascading and being refracted along countless bedding planes and unconformities to arrive, and still be detectable in near-surface (say less than 1,000 foot deep, and that’s being generous) aquifers thousands of feet to miles higher in a geologic instant?
Such that the USEPA can claim that they have found its signature in 3 places, only to later recant that they bungled that badly in each case.
With one exception, the ONLY way to get these “dangerous chemicals” into an aquifer quicksmart is if they
-
Possess a density less than crude oils yet greater than methane (assuming they remain water-based solutions and do not spontaneously become a gas at deep formation pressures (ludicrous just to cogitate)
-
Have an yet unreported ability to jet through the labyrinth of bedding planes, other shales etc. in order to reach the surface often miles above in no time flat, where we can sample them.
The exception being transmission up the annulus of the exploratory boring/well itself. Now this can be a rather egregious problem as Macondo informs us. Are we not yet to learn the dirty details of Halliburton’s slipshod cementing of Macondo’s annulus? And this is an all too common problem for the O&G industry, driven as it is by economics, often offering bonuses to drilling contractors for completing the well ahead of schedule. Newly drilled wells are all too frequently subjected to anthropogenic pressures “before their time”, i.e. before the cement has been allowed to properly setup. Assuming it is proper cement in the first place.
This egregious problem can readily be addressed with some skillful regulations on concrete formulations (with allowances for evolution of these formulations by rigorous engineering standards which they must achieve), and a permit-specified curing time etc.? At least at the minimum.
That is literally about all it would take. This would not be egregiously expensive to the O&G industry, at least not when compared to blow-outs, extensive baseline groundwater monitoring ahead of and during drilling/production, cleanup costs etc. Environmental considerations, frankly, should be everyone’s first move these days. Would better up-front due diligence have prevented Macondo, Elgin or Frade? It’s just risk management, which Macondo informs us, can be a pretty big part of exploration management, and cost.
Just as “A stern chase after a lie is a long one” so is the trip for natural oil and gas seeps, which have had tens to hundreds of millions of years to do it, and a much more robust density drive than water based, and therefore easily further dissolved/dispersed chemical fracking solutions are likely to ever have. The “hole” in this theory is the exploration/production borehole itself, a relatively trivial and inexpensive problem to solve.
William F. McClenney
I am a gas field geologist working in the Marcellus. My graduate research was in natural hydraulic fracturing along reactivated precambrian faults during the early paleozoic. I studied seismic pumping of gas rich fluids and heavier than water liquids. Apart from my practice I am the president of the state licensing board in Pa for engineers and geologists. But the general public knows far more about this than I do. At a recent public meeting I was repeatedly called a liar when I answered question[s]. They obviously knew the right answers and called me on it when I gave what they knew to be the wrong answer. If I did not hold a public office (a voluntary one I might add) I would not deal with the public on this either.
TomG(ologist) says:
April 29, 2012 at 8:10 pm: That is a sad tale to hear. I would hope that that wasn’t the “general public” but instead the subset “Mindless Freaking Radical Environmentalist Luddite” which is impossible to deal with. However, my sister watched that tv drama – forget the name, but it was incendiary – and she won’t believe a word I say to the contrary (what can I say, she lives in White Plains)! Perhaps the industry should think about suing the people who produced and distributed that crapolla, making it an expensive hobby to peddle highly damaging falsehoods.
Thank You, William F. McClenney!
And Thank You to all of the knowlegeable commentors on this thread! This has been a most interesting and timely discussion.
Barbee said:
“In all seriousness, lately it seems that clean water is more rare than hydrocarbon deposits (here in the US) and something that we ought to be spending more time and effort in securing.”
In all seriousness, as Mack pointed out, hydrocarbons are much more scarce than clean water.
When the Great Lakes were discovered, Champlain called them “sweetwater seas”. They are all fresh water, and require minimal treatment. The Zebra mussel infestation is making the water even cleaner.
It is in those areas where water is scarce that, as usual, the vile enviro crowd is trying to make life even more difficult and expensive for the local residents.
Flowback is not a release, as the flow goes into storage. “Release” is being used as shorthand for “release into the environment”, and flowback is not released because it arrives through the same high-pressure system which performed the fracking and is stored until disposal. There are helpful links in your post which explain this.
Smokey says:
April 29, 2012 at 8:46 pm
Barbee said:
…When the Great Lakes were discovered, Champlain called them “sweetwater seas”. They are all fresh water, and require minimal treatment.
———————————————-
As I understand the USA takes 90% of its water from the Great Lakes. If you can pump oil from Alberta to Texas you can transport Great Lakes anywhere in North America.
Just think how much water you would have if people stopped watering their lawns.
Lisa Jackson admitted on TV that there is no incident where fracturing has caused any contamination that they have discovered. (and believe me they have tried hard)
This after attacking one company over an extended period who proved the EPa was making it up and after denying that the policy of one of her local regional appointees was not the Official policy. Remember he was one who said they adopt the Roman policy of crucifying the first 5 males as they entered the city to intimidate the entire town to fall into line. This guy remains to be fired.,
She should be fired with him.
Anyone who doubts this is her policy is sleeping.
Also remember the Administration was held in contempt of court for unlawfully stopping drilling after the Gulf oil spill and alterting the report from the experts
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/26/epa-official-apologizes-crucify-comments/
.http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0412/75687.html
Thats a nasty dig at Halliburton over the Macondo well blowout. Unless you are privy to more info than the general public …
Please allow me to introduce another level of complexity. You see, in the typical oil and gas well, there are many overlapping casing strings and many cement jobs. Between each of these overlapping casing strings there exists an annulus into which the cement is pumped to provide a seal. The cement is not necessarily pumped to fill the entirety of each annulus. Some several hundred feet of the bottom of the overlap is usually cemented.
Each inner string of casing extends deeper than the previous string. So in addition to cement in the overlap, there is also cement in the annulus of the casing and the wellbore (drilled hole). Cement is pumped from the bottom of the casing string, up the casing/wellbore annulus and into the annulus that is the inside of the previous casing string (overlap).
As has been pointed out, there can be leakage past the cement. This is normally a function of the bonding of the cement to the steel casing. Have you ever painted without properly preparing the surface and had the paint peel off, that is a bonding issue. Over time, gas can seep along the less than perfect cement-to-casing bond surface. This of course takes some time to occur and it certainly has to be gas because the leak path is too tight for water or oil and the capillary forces of those fluids would plug the path.
It is all about elimination or mitigation of risk and petroleum engineers have been eliminating or mitigating hydraulic fracturing risks for 60+ years. The only thing new here is the advent of cement conformance technologies that have come into being in the last 5 years. Engineers have recognized the sustained casing pressures that are seen when the cement bonds fail and they pursued solutions. They recognize that multiple redundant layers to contain the reservoir pressures are not enough if you still have an issue that can be remedied in an effective manner. There are now tools and techniques that combat gas migration post cementing.
Gas migration past the cement produces sustained casing pressure and you would see the pressure on the surface gauges. For gas to be seen in a water aquifer from an oil or gas well, it would have to;
a) leak and have sustained pressure on the inner casing annulus, and
b) migrate through multiple cemented annulli, and
c) be of sufficient quantity to be noticeable.
d) You would probably need lots of wells like this. Have you ever tried to find a small gas leak?
Did anyone catch the bit about capillary forces? That’s right, the normal path of gas leakage due to cement bond failure does not apply to fracturing fluids. The frac fluids that are pumped into the well, and their chemical additives, generate too high of a capillary force to flow up the same path that gas can take. All the popular examples of gas in the kitchen faucet are simply irrelevant to fracturing fluids. They are however, very relevant to people who FEEL they know what they are taking about or to people who do know what they are talking about and wish to deceive.
Let me go off topic and thank the oil companies for the lovely sand beaches of California. You see when California was taken from the Spanish, and up until recent times, the beaches were awash with tar balls. Shallow oil reservoirs offshore had natural seeps. The oil companies produced the oil from these reservoirs and in so doing they reduced the pressure in the reservoir. Voila, no more oil seeps and tar balls on the California beaches. The La Brea tar pits are seen as an extension of this shallow petroleum system.
TomG(ologist) says:
April 29, 2012 at 8:10 pm
Tom,
You aptly describe the modern malaise. Many of us have experienced it. It is more than just a lack of respect. It is contempt for those of us that chose rigorous educations, mentally and physically challenging careers, and contempt for the meager store house of wisdom we acquired from exercising both.
We’ve spent our efforts on truly advancing the science, technology, and art of our chosen fields. We accepted great challenges and reached for the moon, the planets, and the stars.
Unfortunately, we didn’t see or understand the cultural shift that started in the late 60s. It started with “Question Authority!” and “Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30!” It became more insidious, with the 1st ‘Earth Day’. That is when the indoctrination grew into a formal agenda to isolate each new generation from the preceding. Each generation is ‘educated’ to believe the preceding one has despoiled the planet and only the current one can save it! There is no historical perspective, only the indoctrination embedded in the education system, from The Weekly Reader on up.
It has brought us to a point in time where the knowleged and experienced are cursed by the #occupymeh flotsam and jetsam of humanity.
Still, we must face them. Looking them directly in the eye, we must address their foul tirades with reason, logic, and facts. Looking them directly in the eye, we must tell them that their tirades will change the facts not one iota. Then state the facts yet again, knowing that some people are ‘slow learners’. If you find yourself alone and faced by 10 of them and it looks like the odds are unfair, give them the option to go get more ‘reinforcements’, because it will not change the facts one iota.
Finally, Thank You, TomG(ologist), for helping bring this Nation the energy it needs! Be strong, My Friend! The darkest hour is just before dawn….
MtK
As a layman, it’s great to have this excellent technical essay posted for our education in a subject that is currently producing much heat but very little light. I appreciate the clearly enunciated article accompanied by clear visuals, and the great technical responses from other commenters that speaks to it.
Thank you, William F McLenney.
I’m a geologist who has been in and around the oil & gas industry most of my life. I second the comments by ImranCan that the emphasis in the article on the location, definition and importance of source rocks is misplaced. A lot of the formations that have been significantly enhanced by horizontal drilling and fracking had already been producing for years, some poorly, The Eagle Ford Shale is a classic example. It’s near the surface in the Dallas area but dives to 12,000′ in south Texas. Along the way it changes from a producing zone to a nuisance zone (gas blowouts when drilling through it) to a source rock for the Austin Chalk. Fracking that shale in the right area would yield a lot of gas. But how deep? 3,000′, 5,000′, deeper? There is no danger to ground water from fracking formations that deep. The danger is in drilling through the fresh water formations without sufficient protection.
I used to work for Dowell Schlumberger in Dubai in the early 1980s (lawyer – not an engineer, so I will leave the science to others). DS did well cementing, well stimulation (of which “frakking” is just one kind of well stimulation, another was to use hydrochloric acid to dissolve sediment in the rock pores that was slowng down the flow of oil)
I recall one staff meeting when the topic of doing the deepest well stimulation (using liquid nitrogen) was discussed. The well was five miles deep, a then record depth for the company. Probably pretty routine now.
Are there any drinking water wells that are five miles deep. Of course, not all O&G wells are that deep but much well stimulation is/was pretty deep, so it is rather difficult to see how this kind of frakking can contaminate drinking water.
Just my 2 cents.
Good to see this post. A couple of additions. To my knowledgge the first time a well was fracced was in 1948. Fraccing of tight (low permeability) rocks may happen in tight sandstones or carbonates, or more recently in source rocks, that is fine-grained claystones with high organic carbon contents. A “source” rock means exactly that – a rock in which organic matter has been preserved and provides the source of organic material which may then migrate into a reservoir rock. Organic material might be from an environment such as a lake or shallow sea where there were high levels of plankton or other marine life, which died, settled to the lake or sea floor, and where there was not enough life on the bottom to use up all that organic material. Total organic content (TOC) typically might be 1 – 5 % but can range higher to 8 – 10% locally in excellent source rocks. The source rock does not have to be stratigraphically lower than a reservoir rock. There are many cases around the planet where younger source rocks charge older reservoirs. The two rocks just have to be in contact, with the source rock usually below or beside the reservoir. As pointed out elsewhere, the source rocks now being drilled and fracced are not necessarily below other reservoir rocks. You choose to drill where costs to benefit are acceptable, so you target shallower rocks where possible. To be mature, source rocks have to have reached a temperature of about 80 – 115 degrees, which usually means getting buried by subsequent layers of sediment to a depth of about 2 km. However rocks may then be unroofed due to uplift and erosion which means that mature source rocks may occur at shallower depths.
Fraccing of source rocks has been happening for over 20 years, with pioneer companies like Mitchell Oil. However, as techniques were refined and improved and as gas prices in the US rose from 2003 through 2008, ($6 – 8, peaking at over $14 in 2005) the shale gas boom ensued. At the height, gas rigs were 85% of the rig count to 15% directed at oil. With the recent collapse in prices to under $2 /mcf, companies are switching and 68% of US rigs are now directed at oil versus 32% at gas.
Multi-lateral drilling and mult-stage fraccing of the Bakken Shale has meant that North Dakota now produces over 500, 000 barrels of oil per day. Thats more than the US imports from OPEC country Ecuador. It is also now the state with lowest unemployment, and has helped US oil imports to drop to under 44% versus 60% of usage at the peak in 2006. The drop in gas prices is probably also fomenting a manufacturing boom in the US. This is part of the reason why a recent Woodmac report suggested that for every direct oil patch job created there will be 5 times as many created over all.
Mike Bomley says: “And just to be sure, most fracking fluid consists of….water. Water with some sifted sand added to act as a ‘proppant’, to keep the fractures from collapsing. Both, I might add, highly toxic substances.”
I have always been puzzled about the ‘toxic chemicals’ greenies refer to when they are bleating on about the supposed dangers of fracking. You can, of course, drown in water, and someone could force feed you sand until you die, so in typical greenie logic these are toxic chemicals.
I am a minerals geologist, not a petroleum one, and when we suspect we have discovered an economic mineral deposit, we immediately bring in approved independent contractors to undertake exhaustive ‘base line’ studies. Amongst other things, these studies tell us the exact state of the soil, streams (if any) and ground water prior to mining. So when a Greenpeace equivalent, or greenie NGO, tries to cause you grief for “contaminating the environment” when you start production (almost inevitable these days), then you have the ammunition to send them back into their little dark holes.
I assume those in the petroleum/natural gas exploration industry, if they are smart, do something similar.
Bill Illis and all:
I make my living supervising oil well fracs and have been in this industry for over 30 years. You ask how this technology will impact future reserves and production. I ask myself this same question daily. Twenty years ago in Alberta, we’d frac a well and get 80 – 200 barrels per day (BPD) of production that would typically peter-out in a year or so, down to 12 – 40 BPD. Today, we frac multiple stages along a horizontal section of a thousand meters of more and the production is many multiples of what we had seem in the past. 600 – 1200 BPD is not uncommon. In fact, that volume is quite routine. And the wells will flow like that for many months, dropping to 120 – 250 BPD in a year or so.
So the bottom line is that we are seeing much higher rates of production from formations that were simply un-producable in eras-past. We considered that Alberta’s convention oil production days were well behind us and most of the big players in the industry had moved into OilSands or left the province entirely. Today the mantra is truly “drill-baby-drill” and more rigs are drilling more wells and Alberta is consequently, seeing levels of conventional oil production that we were never able to attain previously. Extrapolated world-wide, horizontal drilling and multi-stage fracturing has the potential to see the NYMEX flooded with oil and I personally would not be surprised to see the WTI price back down around $50 if this level of success continues. If America joins the party to the levels of activity that Albertans are at, expect $30 WTI.
Oh, and incidentally, if I want to keep my kushy job and 6 figure income, it’s vital that I keep my frac fluids in tanks, trucks or surface lines. Every drop that touches the ground puts me one step closer to unemployed. We are VERY careful with our fluids pre-and post frac. Nothing gets spilled and if it does, it is usually very small quantities (a few litres) and even then is quickly cleaned-up, the contaminated soil and fluid sent for proper disposal. At $100 WTI, if your business depends on cutting corners to be profitable, you’re in the wrong business.
Great article, Though the issue of faulting, anticlines, in reference to interception of, and migration into of hydrocarbons and hydrofracturing fluid by the propagation of the fracture and/or the horivontal well section.
Could I also point to a serious flaw in the findings and conclusions made by the author.
Thick shales with high organic content (gas is absorped into the organic matrix of the shale itself, it is not ‘free’ gas as in the case of tight sandstone formations) In some cases, an I nominate areas of Western Australian sedimentary basins for a local perspective. The ‘seal’ is a prospective shale at a depth of 1800m – 2500m. All formations above these shales are permeable and contain water of various degrees of potability. (Deepest potable water is about 1200m)
The conventional reservoir ‘seal’ is being fracked. Need I explain further? No, I don’t think so.
Also missing from this well written puzzle is the piece of information required about the ‘old’ technology of hydrofracturing not actually being that ‘old’ Fracking has been used in conventional reservoirs to stimulate flow for decades. Yes this is correct. Directional drilling, blowing apart your well casing, then pumping millions of litres of water mixed with tens – hundreds – thousands (depending on the reservoir characteristics) of tons of chemicals at pressures often exceeding 15,000psi is a very new technology.
Could the author please enlighten the audience as to what happened recently on the Caudrilla Resources site in Lancashire recently? leading the complete loss of fluid, induced seismicity and eventual complete comprimise of a nearby well casing integrity due to the event?
Cheers.
Anthony
The trouble with pushing the boundaries with these two milestones is that we here at WUWT will expect ever greater efforts in future. So, when will you be authoring your first article from the space station-or the depths of the sea- anywhere else will seem pretty tame 🙂
tonyb
AnonyMoose says:
April 29, 2012 at 8:54 pm
Skeptic says:
April 29, 2012 at 5:29 pm
@ur momisugly Mike Bromley the Canucklehead (April 29, 2012 at 4:29 pm)
Flowback is not a release, as the flow goes into storage.
Or reuse. Similar to the vast reuse of water at the Athabaska Oilsands. Saves money, y’see.
ImranCan says:
April 29, 2012 at 5:23 pm
“I also work in the oil industry, 20 years, manager with major international, based in SE Asia, earth scientist by background.
This article has the correct conclusions (frakking is not an issue as its been going on for decades) but unfortunately is not well written, misses some key points and pieces of information and makes some erroneous statements. Not least of these is that source rocks occur below reservoir rocks. Generally true for [the] traditional petroleum system but this has nothing to do with what is being targeted under current frack type development proposals. Source rocks occur everywhere and the areas where they are currently being don’t necessarily have to be deep or associated with reservoir rock at all.”
What is needed by those of us neither scientifically trained or O&G veterans is a consice explanation, with cited sources as necessary, which we can cite to refute the propaganda put out by the enviros in our local media, blogs, etc. At present much of this goes unchallenged. We need to up our game.
If Mr. McClenney’s paper is not it, what is? If there is not one then, as RACook says, why don’t you write it.
I feel this comment is worth repeating, good on you sir.
Alexander K says:
April 29, 2012 at 9:51 pm
As a layman, it’s great to have this excellent technical essay posted for our
education in a subject that is currently producing much heat but very little light. I
appreciate the clearly enunciated article accompanied by clear visuals, and the
great technical responses from other commenters that speaks to it.
Thank you, William F McLenney.
As a layman myself I have a question.
TomG(ologist) says:
April 29, 2012 at 8:10 pm
“My graduate research was in natural hydraulic fracturing along reactivated
precambrian faults during the early paleozoic.”
The word ‘precambrian’ caught my eye. I understand there was little to no life on land
at that period so what form of life before and during ‘precambrian’ laid down sufficient
biotic debris to allow the vast quantities of ‘fossil’ oil to be recovered now?
Five alternatives to Fracking.
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Top_5_Exotic_Free_Energy_Technologies
man, those were some super strong/heavy dinosaurs to force their dead bodies into the rocks like that.
good article, one many should point people too and some great comments too.
thanks all.
A voice for Halliburton
A Halliburton Hand is just a part of the machinery, the on site “Company man ” pushes all the buttons and the ” Company man” has his readout as to which buttons to push ! Bad cement jobs are 99.9% Company problems, there are so many fail-safe’s in a cement job with cement samples and pressure readings etc, its idiot proof, a Halliburton Hand has a in house information network, which keeps the “Hand ” ahead of the idiots, A Halliburton on site Representative who usually has 10 plus years of experience and a very nice pay packet and pension to protect is a professional ! .