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 ...
Worked for Aubrey McClendon. He's the guy who pioneered shale drilling.
I didn't claim George Mitchell was the biggest producer. He's the one the figured out how to get the Barnett Shale to be productive.
To call anyone else "the guy who pioneered shale drilling" is false. Aubrey may have invested the most after others' first figured it out. But if you want to claim one guy as "the pioneer", it is George Mitchell.
Hydraulic fracturing has been around since roughly 1950. But it was Mitchell, drilling in the Barnett Shale near Dallas and Fort Worth, who figured out that fracking could work to break natural gas free from the impermeable shale — this ultimately set in motion the boom in shale drilling that has spread across the country, and soon, the world.
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Down in Texas, George Mitchell and his Mitchell Energy & Development had combined horizontal drilling with hydraulic fracturing to blast open impermeable (or “tight”) rock. This is the innovation that made all the difference.
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George Mitchell, the wildcatter who figured out how to squeeze natural gas out of the Barnett Shale, told Forbes that the government should more closely regulate fracking. Mitchell, who combined hydraulic fracturing with directional drilling to make shale production profitable, called for “very strict controls” from the Department of Energy. Mitchell sold his company, Mitchell Energy & Development, to Devon Energy, which is now one of the largest natural gas producers in the country.
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Mitchell, Hamm, McClendon and others were all some of the the pioneers in this field who believed in the technology and risked their fortunes investing heavily in it. But if you want to take the list down to one, "the guy", then it is Mitchell. All others followed what he proved.
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