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Waterless Fracking promises more energy, less trouble
140 Comments
November 7, 2014 8:16 pm
Gas fracking was used in the San Juan Basin coal degas wells 20+ years ago. The process was to pump nitrogen into the coal bed under high pressure and then abruptly release it, creating a geyser of water, nitrogen, and smashed up bits of coal. The result was a large cavity in the coal bed, surrounded by a network of both natural and manmade fractures, which formed an ideal place for methane to migrate into.
November 7, 2014 8:44 pm
Probably no coincidence this is out of Colorado where Shell have been working with cryogenic techniques to extract Green River oil shale.
They are not fracking to my knowledge, but using cryo to create barriers to water contamination. I presume they have also solved many of the problems in getting liquid nitrogen underground.
As a CSM alum, and a petroleum engineer, I am intrigued by the technique. Cryogenic gases have been around the oil patch for decades; we have been pumping them as liquids but warming them up through a heat exchanger so that what goes into the wellbore is a gas. the mechanics of injecting the cryogenic gas are going to be pretty complicated: The folks at CSM should be congratulated if they’ve successfully addressed that bit of engineering.
I suspect, though, that the press has really missed the point on the technique. Water use by hydraulic fracturing is not the issue that the greens are trying to paint. There are many articles at ‘Energy in Depth’ which address that myth. I would postulate that the real purpose behind the technique is to try and extend the ability to fracture unconventional source rocks into shales that may be too ‘plastic’ (as opposed to brittle) for the (now) conventional stimulation techniques.
Fernando, i agree that you don’t want to expose much (or any) casing to the cold temperatures. The work string, as you say, will be quite expensive. Not only must it be insulated, plus a grade of material that can withstand the temperatures, there also need to be a seal bore/ slick joint assembly to allow for length changes due to thermal effects, countered by pressure effects. Packer design must either be such that the seals are thermally insulated from tubing fluids, or it must have some pretty exotic elastomer for those seal elements. My guess is these issues are among the things addressed by the engineers from CSM.
Now, do I expect to see this in practice any time soon? No. It may never prove to be economically attractive, or it may become a successful niche tool in development for certain types of unconventional lithologies. I think it’s a notable development, worth following for those in my industry who work with ‘unconventionals’ (which doesn’t include me). Now I’m going to shut up.
November 7, 2014 10:36 pm
ii have no romantic feelings about fracking:
1 Nov: Bloomberg: Asjylyn Loder: Shale Drillers Feast on Junk Debt to Stay on Treadmill
The U.S. drive for energy independence is backed by a surge in junk-rated borrowing that’s been as vital as the technological breakthroughs that enabled the drilling spree…
Cheap debt, along with advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, have propelled U.S. oil output to a 26-year high…
“Who can, or will want to, fund the drilling of millions of acres and hundreds of thousands of wells at an ongoing loss?” Ivan Sandrea, a research associate at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in England, wrote in a report last month. “The benevolence of the U.S. capital markets cannot last forever.” …
“The whole boom in shale is really a treadmill of capital spending and debt,” Chauhan said.
Access to the high-yield bond market has enabled shale drillers to spend more money than they bring in. Junk-rated exploration and production companies spent $2.11 for every $1 earned last year, according to a Barclays analysis of 37 firms…
“It’s a perfect set-up for investors to lose a lot of money,” Gramatovich said. “The model is unsustainable.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-30/shale-drillers-feast-on-junk-debt-to-say-on-treadmill.html
8 Sept: Bloomberg: Asjylyn Loder: Drillers Piling Up More Debt Than Oil Hunting Fortunes in Shale
Companies are paying a steep price for the gains. Like Halcon, most are spending money faster than they make it, an average of $1.17 for every dollar earned in the 12 months ended on June 30. Only seven of the U.S.-listed firms in Bloomberg Intelligence’s E&P index made more money in that time than it cost them to keep drilling…
These companies are plugging cash shortfalls with junk-rated debt. They owed $190.2 billion at the end of June, up from $140.2 billion at the end of 2011…
Money manager Tim Gramatovich sees disaster looming in the industry.
“I have lent money to nobody in this space, and I don’t plan to. This thing is absolutely going to blow sky-high,” says Gramatovich, chief investment officer of Peritus Asset Management LLC in Santa Barbara, California…
Discrepancies between proved reserves and resource potential are common in the industry, and investors can get duped, says Ed Hirs, a managing director at Houston-based Hillhouse Resources LLC, an independent energy company, who also teaches energy economics at the University of Houston.
“There’s a lot of ways to make money in the oil and gas business, and not all of them involve drilling for oil,” he says. “You just drill investors’ pocketbooks. When investors are willing to throw money at you, you can just make money on that. It’s a time-honored tradition.” …
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-08/halcon-s-wilson-drills-more-debt-than-oil-in-shale-bet.html
You can also look at financials for ivanpah solar and look at the how the project is moving along for production.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/ivanpah-solar-project-owners-delay-repaying-loans-documents-say-1411488730
I would be a little slow to jump on the Bloomberg bandwagon here. Remember he plays political games that are not necessarily good for the U.S. economy.
The financial situation with fracking is undergoing a severe test at the moment as Saudi Arabia attempts to undermine the U.S. boom with a price war. We will all know soon how stable this growth is, I suspect.
One of the things I remember about various oil booms over the decades is that more drillers lose their shirts than hit it big. It’s the striving to be one of the winners that drives them. Winning can pay overwhelmingly large dividends.
November 8, 2014 2:28 am
Errr. So you inject all this liquid nitrogen [or] liquid CO2 into the ground. So what is there, to stop a blowout? What is there, to stop a Lake Nyos asphyxiation disaster?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos
Frankly, I think water is a much safer option.
Ralph
Ralfellis: 1. I presume you didn´t intend to write “liquid nitrogen OF liquid CO2”. The article states liquid nitrogen. Liquid CO2 is an alternative. So is liquid methane. All of these products are presumably pumped at high pressure into the well. These operations are carried out with steel pipes connected to the well, which is also equipped with a set of concentric steel pipes. 2. If your question involves the injected fluids escaping from rocks 2000 meters below the surface….once the fluids are injected into the rocks they tend to stay there. Why? Because fluids have a really hard time flowing vertically through 2000 meters of rock. This has nothing to do with Lake Nyos.
>>Liquid CO2 is an alternative.
Yeah, which is why my ‘OF’ was a mistyped ‘OR’. Perhaps you have never looked, but the ‘f’ is next to the ‘r’ on a keyboard. i.e.: “liquid nitrogen OR liquid CO2″ Get it now?
>>Because fluids have a really hard time flowing
>>vertically through 2000 meters of rock.
If there is a drill-hole that can deliver the CO2 or Nitrogen 2000 m down, there is a drill-hole through which that same CO2 or Nitrogen can escape. How do you think well blow-outs like the Deepwater Horizon occur?? Did you think all that oil all came out by “flowing vertically through 2000 meters of rock” ???
Geeez, Fernando, please do get up to speed.
R
November 8, 2014 4:08 am
Some (possibly) useful numbers:
It takes about 4 MJ to produce 1 cubic meter of LN2 (http://liquidair.org.uk/full-report/report-chapter-two).
1 Cubic meter (scm) of natural gas produces about 36 MJ of energy.
Then there will be higher tooling costs–the LN2 would be pumped down at ground temperature and high pressure (same as in my lab). The actual cooling happens on expansion.
At the end of the day, everything comes down to yield. If cryo-fracking increases the total yield from a given volume then it could win, but I don’t have a good source to say what the yield would be from 1 cubic meter of LN2. If, over time, it releases more than 1 cubic meter (scm) of natural gas, it could be competitive.
November 8, 2014 5:42 am
Currently, CO2 fracs are done creating a foam that carries the proppant (sand, ceramic) and that sand concentration has to be fairly high (think about the difference between keeping a cup of sand suspended in a bucket of water vs keeping five cups of sand suspended in the same bucket of water without letting any sand settle at the bottom of the bucket. The thicker the liquid you’re stirring up, the easier it is to keep more sand suspended)
Because as mentioned, hydraulic fracs aren’t just about breaking the rock, but keeping the channels open, and to you have to put the sand or other proppant down the hole in large volumes without clogging the casing/tubing (hopefully, you’re doing a casing frac, because fracking down tubing limits your pressure profile and limits the amount of sand concentration you’re pushing down there. Much of it has to do with friction)
After the foam (or water gel, in the case of water fracs) conducts the massive amounts of sand down the hole, the foam has to break up.
Foams made to use with CO2 break up too soon. The risk the highly concentrated sand mixture will clog up your casing, causing an expensive massive delay in your operations, is fairly high. It’s the creation of a stable foam to be used with CO2 that well predictably breakdown that is the limit. Anything else, (expansion/contraction of metal with temperature differentials, etc) come second to the main problem of getting the proppant down there.
I believe Nitrogen foam also has issues along the same lines
The foams that work with propane I believe are much more stable than the ones made from other gasses, but I think the concentration of sand downhole is still less than with a good gel frac. Add to that, you’re working with propane under pressure, and I know a few frac advisement firms (yes, there are independent advisers you pay to tell you how best to frac a well–these competing ‘recipes’ for fracking yield different returns on the significant investment) that will NOT work with a propane frac.
In other words, what works now carries less risk vs reward than experimental.
November 8, 2014 8:34 am
Fracking with gelled propane is practiced by a Canadian company called GasFrac. Checkout the company and its claims at http://www.gasfrac.com. ( I am not affiliated with the company. I own no stock in the company and do not plan to buy/short the stock in the next 72 hours)
November 8, 2014 9:33 am
Waterless fracking is not new. Various types of gas fracks have been done for well over 40 years. The reason that all fracks are not waterless is that they on average cost a lot more and in some types of formations are not feasible. They won’t work or can’t be done. (Note. there have been almost 2 million fracks done in the US since around 1950).
From time to time, there are articles extolling the virtues of gas fracks. Usually, they are from someone who didn’t even know that gas fracks have been around for several decades or are written to promote companies that do gas fracks.
Should gas fracks be mandated by government, the economic and technical problems with gas fracks are so large that it would reverse the growth of shale oil and gas. That said, where gas fracks are economical and work, they are already being requested by oil companies. Several service companies do gas fracks including Gasfrac, Halliburton and Baker Hughes among others.
The other issue is water. It is assumed that fracking causes large amounts of water to be polluted. In reality, the main non-organic chemical that is “polluting” is the chemical to kill Algae and bacteria that must be used prior to fracking. Bacteria and algae cause biological films (crud) to form that would plug up pores in the well preventing production. Additionally, they don’t want live bacteria in the well. The chemicals to kill the bacteria and algae are similar to those used in swimming pools to keep water free of Algae and bacteria. Once the frac water flows back out of the well, the oil industry has methods worked out to clean the water and have had such methods for decades. These methods have been regulated by various states for decades. That is why there are few documented cases of frack water actually polluting anything. There is also a growing movement to reuse frack water in wells over and over. So, the water is used to frack a well. Later the water flows back out, is cleaned and gathered and used in another frack.
Many might wonder if the above is true, why the alarm over fracking? There have been occasional wells that leak or frack water overflowing out of a retention pond before it is cleaned up perhaps due bad weather and rainwater runoff which cause a retention pond to overflow. But the risk from the frack water is low. A similar risk would be from someone dumping a couple of gallons of chemicals for cleaning their pool into an irrigation ditch that goes out to a river. Any oil well that leaks though is typically labeled as a “fracking problem” when in fact, a well that leaks has nothing to do with fracking. The reason to label any oil well issue as a problem with fracking is that the public has been convinced fracking is a scary problem. A headline about fracking “leads the news because it bleeds” at least in the gullible imagination of the public.
November 8, 2014 1:59 pm
Its does no matter it they only used fairy dust and rocking horse sh*t , fracking is opposed because it is threat .
That is a threat the green dreams of having the type of energy shortages that mean their madder ideas can be forced onto the people and a threat to those who find that the easiest and more profitable type of farming is subside farming from renewables . Like much in this area , it is not about the science.
November 8, 2014 3:04 pm
MOST ENJOYABLE.
So many positive “here is what can be done” or “here is what has been done” or “watch for this” or “yes it can be done this way but with care”………Yes, not only the engineering/science aspects but also the economics.
Very little nonsense on this thread.
Great contributions.
There is hope, reminds me of two young students at Penn State Mining Engineering School talking to me recently.
Yes we can do it!
Here in Western Pennsylvania there is a “boom in fracking” as you well know.
Two years ago, a Company proposed to sign a contract for fracking on a college campus.
I was hoping this would be accepted and not only provide $ for the college but a great learning laboratory for the students. But no. Green opposition won.
Can you imagine fracking on a college campus.
With all the students there close to the action, able to visit the site, ask questions, get the faculty involved, get all the departments involved: engineering, biology, chemistry, law, …….invite students from other colleges, learn that yes we need energy and yes we must do it in a responsible way.
But NO. The Greens won. Very sad. Wasted opportunity.
November 8, 2014 3:18 pm
Don’t get too excited about this – the economics of this just don’t wash. The N2 and CO2 are expensive, the tubing and casing have to be very strong which means expensive, there is no way of placing the proppant reliably for optimum recovery which means flow rates won’t be anywhere near as good as gelled water fracs which means revenues will be lower and for not as long. I’ve been fraccing since 1982 (and still fraccing) and designing wells and managing well integrity for years. And safety issues are greater.
November 8, 2014 6:15 pm
Part humor, part real info. Landfills produce CO2 which is often removed with the H2S and other impurities from the gas stream to increase methane value. The CO2 is pretty easy to purify and there is a lot of it, about 46% of Landfill Gas.
The landfill I work at regularly produces over 4000 cfm every minute of every day. Even with the water out we produce 1500 scfm of CO2. There are a lot of landfills.
November 9, 2014 7:12 am
Heck, in eastern Kentucky they’ve been fracking with LN for -literally- one hundred years. The Devonian shales there are ~1,000 feet down and full of clay. Fracking with water would cause the clay to expand and reduce porosity. I don’t know if this method could be extended to deeper formations or not: pressure increases by ~400 psi per each thousand feet of depth, so there may be a practical limit to liquid nitrogen fracking. It is/was widely used in Lawrence, Magoffin, and Johnson counties.
November 9, 2014 8:01 am
I’m guessing this will be too expensive to be widely adopted (other than near-wellbore clean up/skin removal as has been done for decades and decades). Also, the density and viscosity of liquid nitrogen are less amenable to proppant emplacement. I also suspect these wells will be less productive in comparison but hope to be proven wrong.
November 9, 2014 1:32 pm
I was idly wondering whether fracking needs to use a liquid agent at all, rather than a pressurised gas, but I see from a comment above that the idea of ‘gas fracks’ is already familiar but they are more expensive. Still, from an environmental point of view the ideal agent would surely be compressed air – hot, cold, or room temperature – since even the looniest Green couldn’t complain about leaks of air! (Or could they??)
It is the controlled application and release of that very, very high pressure in the rocks at controlled positions along the outer pipe casing that is the key to “fracking” underground. Liquid air (liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen) is very, very difficult to work with because of their extreme cold causes metallurgy and containment problems and safety problems. Not insurmountable of course, but working at -200 degrees and colder is expensive. And, the energy to pressurize, chill, then store and handle liquid air and the facilities and cryogenic storage of the liquid air itself is very expensive – especially compared to “simple” water and sand and “room-temperature” injection of high-pressure “safe” mud.
Spill water? People don’t get killed. Spill “mud” from a simple fracking truck? People get dirty cleaning it up with hoses and shovels.
Have a traffic accident with a liquid N2 truck? People die.
Have a train accident at a railroad crossing with a liquid oxygen truck? Neighborhoods, whole towns get blown up.
Researchers at the Colorado School of Mines claim they have developed a method to unlock hydrocarbons trapped in shale with using any water at all. They are seeking to perfect Cryogenic fracturing, which replaces water with searing cold liquid nitrogen (or carbon dioxide). Used at temperatures below minus 321 Fahrenheit, it is pumped underground at high pressure. Once it comes into contact with the heated, pressurized shale, a reaction occurs which caused the shale to crack open and creates fissures through which the hydrocarbons can gush out. They liken it to pouring hot water onto a frozen car windshield, with the sharp and sudden temperature change causing the glass to crack.
There are several positive results from using this technique. First, the liquid nitrogen will evaporate underground eliminating the need for costly recovery and retreatment. Further, they claim it will form bigger fissures or canals through which hydrocarbons can be extracted, boosting oil and gas production. In theory, the below-freezing liquid should actually be more rather than less effective than water based methods.
Second, it may well solve problems with water-sensitive formations or those with an unwanted amount of clay. Slickwater fracking often causes water saturation around the fracture and clay swelling, hindering the ability to transport hydrocarbons from the fracture to the well bore. Some shale absorbs water very quickly and the entire formation may swell in size and hinder transport through the fissures we have created. Even in a best case scenario, using hydraulic fracturing results in a low recovery factor, caused largely by water trapping.
h/t to WUWT reader Ben in WUWT Tips and Notes
Source:
http://shaleforum.com/profiles/blogs/too-much-clay-chill-out-why-cryogenic-fracturing-may-be-the?xg_source=msg_mes_network