Posted on 03/28/2008 9:59:13 AM PDT by a real Sheila
That’s partial good news. Maybe there will be some expanded drilling?
That be Goober down at Wally's?
Drilling and production in this formation started a few years ago.
You left out the Marcellus shale in the north east it holds the potential to be as big or larger than the Barnet shale for natural gas here in the DFW area. Exciting times to be a Geologist. We talk about the Bakken, and the Barnet all the time in my Structural Geology class. these shales are classic examples of tight source rocks which until recently the technology to artificiality fracture and stimulate these reservoirs was not economical at <$25 bbl, now with oil north of $50 for the foreseeable future all these plays, NG is >6 Mcf which makes tight gas profitable hence the push for the Barnett, Marcellus plays.
To get the amount as being reported will take expanded drilling and that’s the biggest worry that with the publicity some court will order any expansion ceased.
So they made a n00bie a Moderator?
Or are you just a n00bie thread-nazi?
Read post #37. Besides, I was here 1.5 years before you, just with a different screen name, which was no longer appropriate to recent history.
I was at the March for Justice. Were you?
"that's not entirely accurate" -CIA director Independence day.
On the western side of the Barnett we are finding oil at depth under the gas shales. Myself and some geosicence students from a major university are making a field trip to the shale in the next couple of weeks to do some practice seismic analysis. This oil is unconventional as its is in a tight pore formations that requires hydraulic fracturing to make the formations permeable. This technology is new and relatively expensive. That being said with oil prices they way they are it is still economical to use hydraulic sand fracturing to get at the oil since the Barnett is a relatively shallow formation coil on tube rigs can be used significantly lowering production costs. some history on the Barnett. The Barnett is a black shale of Mississippian age who's sediments were shed in deep marine anoxic waters off the coast from the former Oouachian mountains that ran from Mexico through Texas to Oklahoma and Arkansas. Being an anoxic basin the fossil carbon was not oxidized and under went petrogenesis. pretty much anywhere you had similar black shales laied down oil and gas would have been produced if the rocks were heated and pressurized to petrogenesis conditions; the source rocks also make a great petroclude since they are not permeable without stimulation. basicly the oil/Ng was produced and could not migrate away from the source rocks. It will just be sitting waiting for someone to fracture the formation and release the overburden pressure.
Maybe, but there would still be plenty of money for the Saudis and Iran to spread around for the Jihadis. It just wouldn't be OUR money.
Well, then, that just makes it even MORE important for us to get to the oil in the Bakken field, and that large one out off Alaska.
Thanks for the information. Do you have any comparison of oil versus gas quantities in production or reserves from Barnett Shale?
What the public has not really noticed to a large extent is that our domestic oil industry has figured out a way to extract reserves from shale formations in the past decade, or so.
Shales used to be avoided, drilled through and completions attempted primarily in sandstones and limestones.
The reason was clear. Shales are mud turned into stone, and while there is plenty of organic matter in them that turned into oil or gas, the formation is too closely packed ("tight") to allow the flow of the hydrocarbons from the rock into the wellbore.
Shales make great seals over the top of deeper formations which trap oil and gas and prevent it from escaping to the surface of the earth, where it naturally wants to go.
Today, with horizontal drilling, the industry can make a huge long wellbore in these shales, and then with innovative fracturing and chemical treatments of the formation, actually coax the shales into releasing the oil and/or gas into the well.
It's huge. It's not just the Bakken shales. Perhaps the hottest play right now in Texas is the Barnett Shale, which is being exploited the same way.
The great thing about these formations is that you don't have to worry about finding a localized dome or anticline which has trapped the hydrocarbons. The shale itself has trapped it because of its lack of porosity. It's hard to drill a dry hole because these shales are like a blanket covering a span of hundreds of miles.
It's not cheap to drill these horizontal wells. They cost far more than their vertical equivalents. But with a 90% chance of success or more, and the price of crude being what it is, the oil industry is going to drill the heck out of these things. They're doing it right now.
Boy, you guys are an impatient lot. The Democrats have a plan to increase CAFE standards to 35 mpg by the year 2020. Hang in there. It’s coming.
It won’t do us any good in the ground. As long as drilling and refineries aren’t allowed to be built, we’ll continue to get screwed. This would be such a good chance to tell the muzzies and Chavez to take a flying leap.
*sigh*
It’ll never happen.
And this is the first time I’ve seen it.
In Alaska, the caribou thrive near the oil wells. Just another lie of the environazis when they start complaining about poor caribou. They LOVE our oil wells (the caribou, that is!).
Likely someone is getting paid off.
Besides, it’s not worth it for prices to go down when they now realize they can get so much.
I found this comparison. Predominately a gas field but this is probably more area and deposits than most consider Barnett Shale.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2004/3022/images/table.jpg
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