Posted on 05/27/2015 4:07:06 AM PDT by thackney
...carbonite-formations, and no region has as much oil and gas trapped in carbonate-formations as the Middle East. Carbonates are areas of sedimentary rock-Limestone, for instance—that contain many natural cracks inside them.
Carbonite-formations are estimated to hold 60 percent of the world's oil and 40 percent of the world's gas reserves. In the Middle East, roughly 70 percent of oil and 90 percent of gas reserves are trapped in the carbonite, according to oil services giant Schlumberger....
...Saudia Arabia is fifth in the world when it comes to recoverable gas reserves. Much of that is in carbonate-formation. What Saudia Arabia doesn't have is a lot of water, which you need in fracking. Fishbones technology uses 95 percent less fluids and is designed for recovering oil and gas from carbonate formations...
In a Fishbones system, pipes containing needles are connected together as they're installed in horizontal or vertical well bores. When the solution of water and acid is pumped through this piping system, the pressure of the solution pushes the needles out into the rock formation underground. Those needles, which extend 40 feet in four directions from the main well bore, create tiny tunnels in the rock known as laterals.
After about five hours, the acid is done being pumped, and what's left underground is a large system of lateral tunnels—not to mention the main well bore—from which oil and gas can be pumped. It's for this reason the company is named Fishbones, since the end result of what it creates resembles the skeletal structure of a skinned fish, with the main well bore representing the spine and the lateral tunnels representing the fish's ribs. By pushing acid deep into carbonate formations while creating lateral tunnels, Fishbones ensures that acid comes into contact with more of the natural cracks within carbonate formations....
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
And they have no EPA slowing them down. And that should kill our exports.
Cheap oil is cheap oil. The more the better. If Uncle Sam would take the chains off American oil production and exploration we would see lots of cheaply produced oil right here in the USofA.
Fishbones Multilateral Stimulation Technology
http://www.fishbones.as/
Amimations of how it works at the link
Miniature drilling bits coming off the main well bore
http://www.fishbones.as/1264255
Fishbones stimulation system is an open hole liner completion that connects the well and the reservoir in an efficient operation.
Fishbones operations are simple; run the reservoir liner string as normal and set the liner hanger slips. Circulate fluids with the rig pumps. A large number of small diameter laterals jet out from the wellbore to penetrate the reservoir.
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Case history: First carbonate installation increases Pl 30 times
http://www.fishbones.as/1264342
Location: Texas, USA
On April 3rd of 2014, Fishbones stimulation system was installed in a horizontal well in the Austin Chalk formation. Acid was pumped to jet the Fishbones laterals. Surface indications showed deployment of the needles and a substantial stimulation effect. This installation is a world record with 60 laterals created from a mother wellbore.
The well, located in a tight limestone formation, was shut in and was a candidate for re-stimulation. The formation near wellbore was depleted. The formation has 5% porosity and down hole temperature is 225 degF. Open hole size is 6.5in. The operator has found through previous workover campaigns that rotation is required to successfully run liners into the existing horizontal wells in the Austin Chalk.
Testing: Prior to the installation in Texas, acid jetting testing on representative core samples provided by the operator was performed at Fishbones’ facilities in Norway. By using state of the art testing equipment for jetting with 15% HCl acid at downhole temperatures, the volume required to jet 60 ea. 40ft / 12m laterals was estimated to be 810 bbls.
Solution: A 4.5” Fishbones completion with 15 ea. Fishbones subs and 3 ea. Backbone open hole anchors was planned for in the well, to be spaced out across selected targets for stimulation. Each sub contained four ea. needles with 90 degrees phasing. Two needles in each sub were equipped with a positive identification mechanism that stop the flow of fluid through the needle once it reaches full extension giving a surface pressure indication of needle extension.
The Fishbones completion was run to TD as planned. In accordance with the operator procedures, the liner was rotated from the casing shoe to TD with 40 rpm with typical torque of 2,500 ft-lbs. The liner was rotated for more than 10 hours. The pumping operation went as planned. After pumping 875 bbls of acid, a pressure spike was seen confirming extension of needles (within 8% of estimated volume). The needles jetted successfully and had a strong stimulation effect. The pump pressure was steadily falling at constant rate during the pumping operation. The well’s productivity was 30 times higher after Fishbones stimulation. The IP-30 (cumulative production first 30 days) was 2.6 times higher than the IP-30 after initial completion and stimulation of the well.
Fracking is expensive. Once they start that in the middle east it won’t be as easy for them to price American companies out of business.
Hydraulic Fracturing does not raise the cost to produce oil.
It lowers the cost per barrel of oil produced or it would not be done. It raises the cost per well, but the well produces more oil lowering the cost per barrel.
That said, this article is about a different technology.
Hydraulic Fracturing raises the cost.... not to produce. But it raises the cost on the well. I changes the economics on the well. It means if you Hydraulic Frac a well, either oil or natural gas, you have to have a higher sales price for the oil or gas . Also, horizontal wells that are fractured in the US... shale drilling.... they typically have a much shorter life span. It is not that there is more oil there when you frac it.... it is just that you can drill and recover oil where we used to couldn’t. But the process is more expensive than a traditional downhole well.
I understand its not hydraulic fracturing over there. That new technology will add cost to the middle east oil. Instead of just downhole, perf the pay zone and let it flow oil, they will have significant additional drilling cost. This will drive the economics on the well and make the oil from our shale drilling more competitive from a pricing perspective.
No. No company would ever do it if that was the case.
It does raise the cost per well. But it produces so much more oil, the cost per barrel is less.
. It is not that there is more oil there when you frac it.... it is just that you can drill and recover oil where we used to couldn’t.
Far more oil is produced by hydraulic fracturing the well.
t is just that you can drill and recover oil where we used to couldn’t.
Correct, the same well would have the oil too expensive to produce without hydraulic fracturing. Too little oil would flow to economically recover the cost drill.
They may spend up to 5 times more to hydraulic fracture the well, but produce 50 times the amount of oil (could be greatly more or less).
In the old days they would frac a traditional, vertical well to increase production. It was an enhancement when you fracked a 30 or 40 foot sand payzone. And, if you remember, sometimes those wells were fracked with nitrogen instead of water. But, you're right that would increase the production on those wells. Shale drilling is different. There is no production from shale without fracking. Used to shale was just a tight formation that couldn't be produced. Today the horizontal drilling through that formation combined with fracking allows oil and gas to be produced. But the reserves aren't necessarily greater than the reserves on a traditional well.
At the end of the day, that's what you're talking about. Reserves, cost to drill, cost to produce.... and what you have to sell it for to be profitable.
No economic production, the cost to drill and complete was too great to recover from the minimal flow.
Hydraulic fracturing, combined with horizontal drilling, lower the cost of production per barrel. It does not raise the cost. It lowered the cost to produce enough to make it economic to produce.
It brings more oil and gas to the market by making it cheaper to produce.
False. You may be thinking of George Mitchell.
The Father Of Shale Gas
http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/16/george-mitchell-gas-business-energy-shale.html
George Mitchell and his engineers developed the techniques to exploit shale in the Barnett Shale formation in North Texas. The wildcatters started trying in 1981, finally nailing it in the early 1990s. “My engineers kept telling me, ‘You are wasting your money, Mitchell,’” the 90-year-old billionaire told Forbes this week. “And I said, ‘Well damn it, let’s figure this thing out because there is no question there is a tremendous source bed that’s about 250-feet thick.’ … We made it to be the hottest thing going.”
When They were starting to drill the Barnett Shale, Aubrey McClendon was graduating from Duke with a B.A. in history.
That's simply not correct. Think of the cost to drill a vertical, traditional well and produce it. Compare that to the cost to drill and produce a horizontal well through a shale formation. Yet, the reserves are similar. We do not drill "cheap" oil here anymore because of the expense in shale drilling.
That is why the middle east can produce those wells in a $40 a barrel market and be profitable, while all of our shale drillers have cut back on drilling. As the middle east begins needing to produce from formations besides sand, their costs will be more like ours.... and that will help companies drilling here in the US.
I’m not a Aubrey McClendon fan. I don’t like the way he does business.... but he’s one of the guys who came along in the 90’s and as you said... nailed the thing down. I agree, he didn’t INVENT the process.
The barrels produced by each, in the same play, are greatly different. Comparing cost per well do not have meaning for investment. They sell oil, not wells. Total oil in the ground does not have meaning to the investment. Only the technically and economically recoverable amount.
In the same play, the horizontal, hydraulically fractured well is done because it produces oil for less cost per barrel, or it isn't done.
Aubrey McClendon was a landman and a high risk investor. He did not pioneer shale drilling. That was George Mitchell. Even Aubrey doesn’t make such claims in interviews.
The Two Sides Of Aubrey McClendon, America’s Most Reckless Billionaire
http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2011/10/05/aubrey-mcclendon-chesapeake-billionaire-wildcatter-shale/
I totally agree that Aubrey is reckless. I've set in dozens of meetings where he expressed his philosophy on numerous things. But Chesapeake energy was a pioneer in developing the methods for fracking shale production. Even developing software to track the bit and make certain it stayed in the lease.
Mitchell may have come up with the idea... but just google a little and see when the Barnett shale began really producing. It was when Chesapeake moved in and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars not only leasing, and drilling.... but developing the infrastructure to produce oil IN FORT WORTH where much of the barnett shale was. When that shale area took off, there wasn't even the pipelines to produce it. In those days it took Chesapeake 3 months to setup, drill, and complete a Barnett shale well. It took 20 months to get the pipeline layed to it, because much of it was in Fort Worth proper. Just google production curves on the Barnett shale.
And the fact remains, producing oil in the United States costs more than it does to produce mideast oil. And, as the mideast NEEDS to produce formations besides sand.... in the same way the US NEEDS to produce oil from formations besides sand... then that will be a good thing for US producers.
Fracking is cheaper now than it was and will be cheaper next year than this and on and on. That’s how technology goes. Fracking has existed for a long time. The oil price got high enough and the tech got cheap enough that the two curves crossed and we started pulling up a lot of oil with it. The price drop and the rise is part of the seesaw that results from that process- the Market. I believe it will stay in the neighborhood of $60 for a while subject to war variables and the like but not so much now as before fracking. Then it will get cheaper and cheaper or, more likely, it won’t go higher as inflation drives everything else up. Just think, gasoline right now is cheaper than it was in the 50s when you consider what the dollar is worth now compared to then.
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