There are appropriate uses for using hydraulic fracturing to get more oil and gas out of the ground. If a reservoir engineer believes that the earth around a well is solid, and in most cases it is, he may recommend hydraulic fracturing as a way to put cracks in the ground around an oil well so that oil and gas may flow more easily to a wellbore.
A hammer has good uses and bad uses; yet we should not ban hammers. Likewise, hydraulic fracturing.
I was a fracturing engineer for about a year and a half, and I continue to teach job design software that involves hydraulic fracturing. There are situations where I would not recommend hydraulic fracturing:
- Pay zone — where the hydrocarbons are — is close to ground water
- Pay zone is near hazardous zones or salt domes which are great natural storage facilities for gas
- Nearby area has been fractured before — I’ve been on a job where we fractured into a nearby well.
- Nearby area is naturally fractured
- We have no idea of the lithology, or rock properties, in the area
Fracturing has risk, as does everything else we do. My company, Halliburton, has had a good track record of fracturing wells safely. I’ve never been in a situation where we fractured into somebody’s water supply. When that happens it needs to be investigated, and the cause needs to be determined so that it doesn’t happen again. If there’s liability to be assessed, then it needs to be assessed. If an operator damages somebody’s water supply, then it needs to be fixed if possible and the affected people need to be compensated. That’s the economics of petroleum production.
When somebody says we need a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, replace the words “hydraulic fracturing” with “hammers.” Hydraulic fracturing is indeed using a water hammer to break up rock under the surface of the either. Much more often than not (which is why fracturing is done), hydraulic fracturing is a safe and efficient way to extend the life of the well, reducing the number of wells that need to be drilled in an oil field.
Some people have questions about the safety of the chemicals we use in fracturing. They are fair questions, but they are questions with answers. Halliburton’s research has led it to develop the CleanSuiteTM technologies that use chemicals sourced from the food industry, ultraviolet light, and water-reduction techniques to reduce our environmental impact. This is the way the industry needs to go.
Don’t freak out about fracturing. We need it. Smart and effective use of this tool increases oil and gas supply and reduces your costs of gasoline, natural gas, plastics, and everything that uses hydrocarbons in their production or manufacture.
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Dan,
Can I ask you about underground aquifers?
Coal seam gas exploration and extraction is a new and growing industry in my neck of the woods. One of the arguments used against it is that the chemicals used could contaminate the underground aquifers from which local farmers get much of their water. Eastern Australia has a large underground aquifer known as the Great Artesian Basin. Presumably the local aquifers are part of this larger underground water reservoir.
What’s actually more important than hydraulic fracturing is the construction of the well. Often, the pay zone is thousands of feet below any water zones, and we need a good well that will let us pull the hydrocarbons out of the ground without disturbing the water table above. (See Cementing here). If the well construction is good, any chemicals that we use in fracturing go into the pay zone, and none goes into the water formation.
OK – thanks, Dan.
It would seem then that the environmental safety of fracturing depends on the quality of the engineering and presumably the specs concerning the wells as dictated by the relevant authorities. Rightly or not, people on the land here are suspicious, though; partly, I’m sure, because they have been here for generations and their long-term future depends on the health of the water supply, whereas the miners come and then go when their resource is depleted. Then also I’ve heard some people involved in the industry refer to other operators as “cowboys” – i.e. people who are inclined to take short cuts. My theology tells me that’s a constant temptation to human beings unless a well-formed conscience or the penalties of the law compel them to behave otherwise. What’s the clean-up technology like?
Dan,
Would be interested in your commentary on the site:
http://www.dangersoffracking.com/
This stuff is so far out of my area of expertise I feel like a politician
—Brian
Interesting site. Some observations:
To the Site: Water can be and often is trucked to location. Water also come from nearby wells. Water can also be recycled from previous fracturing treatments.
Sometimes the web site talks about “1-8 million gallons” per job, and then later says a well can be fractured up to 18 times. When we get those multistage jobs, each frac is not going to be 1-8 million gallons. So, don’t multiply 18 x that huge job size. An 18-stage job can be millions of gallons, but each stage in that job isn’t.
Fracturing Site: I’m not going to contest the 40,000 gals of chemicals. Yet, not all of those 40,000 gals of chemicals are lethal, carcinogenic, etc.
Fracking Fluid: 600 chemicals? All at the same time? Let’s see, if we have two blender trucks out there, each with 2 dry-adds and 4 liquid-adds, I’m an engineer so get the calculator, but I get 12.
Down 10000 ft: Nothing to quibble with here.
The Math: Again, I dispute the 8 x 18 in that math. We can get as high as 25, maybe even 30 stages in a job, but in those cases each of those stages is not 8 million or even 1 million gallons.
Shale Fracturing: YES! That’s what we want! Shale is naturally impermeable, and all that gas can’t get out unless we do something about it.
Contamination: see the original post about contamination. Proper well construction alleviates it.
Drinking Water: And where it happens, the oil and gas industry should be responsible.
Left Behind: The 30%-50% is water, sand, and chemicals, not just chemicals. Water and sand make up 90-95% of a treatment, so the amount of chemicals left behind is significantly less.
Harmful VOCs: Some jobs have VOCs, and some don’t.
“300,000 barrels of natural gas” — gas is measured in cubic feet, oil is measured in bbls. There is risk, to be sure, but our webmaster seems to like his/her plastic computer and electricity. It would have been nice to ditch the fancy JavaScript and hyperlink the references so I could easily see where all the numbers are coming from, but we’d rather have our paper tiger than a discussion, I guess.