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Posted on 07/15/2011 5:12:03 AM PDT by Wonder Warthog
The gov will shut it down. The so called “both” parties will stop it immediately like they did Anwar.
Oil production is all but “illegal” in America and has been for at least 50 years. But, you can ‘buy’ as much of it as you want?
The EPA should correctly be called the APA (Arab Protection Association)
“I’m not so sure about that. Fracking is in widespread use in the Haynesville Shale gas field and once those royalty checks begin to flow to landowners and to the local governments, all the “tree hugger” talk tends to get quieter.”
That money has been flowing. My high school friend in Desoto Parish is now very rich and his land holdings have barely been tapped yet. also Desoto parish teachers are now the highest paid in the State. This parish was one of the poorest in Louisiana just a few years ago.
I own the mineral rights to a little piece of land in the Tuscaloosa Trend, as it was called in the 1970’s, when I acquired it. It has been leased out and been paying a tidy sum every month for about 35 years now and shows no sign of letting up.
Thank you, for the link. Interesting.
No surprise. I no longer expect any kind of real accuracy on "news" articles about any subject that requires technical understanding on the part of the reporter.
Bravo to you!!!
Cause and effect? Time will tell. But both sides closely monitoring "events."
Nope. I worked my first horizontal well in the Williston Basin in 1990, and there were a few done there in the mid '80s.
Those wells in the mid-80s were in the Bakken Shale, and most were plagued with problems and did not reach payout.
By 1990 we were drilling in carbonate reservoirs, notably the Ratcliffe, and the 'boom in Bowman' drilling the Red River 'B' wasn't far behind that. We did re-entry laterals in the Madison fields in Tioga, Stonewall Formation Horizontal wells in Eastern Montana, Nisku 'A' wells by Belle Lake Pasture, and started really drilling Bakken Laterals in Elm Coulee Field in Montana in 2000. North Dakota drilling in the Bakken and Three Forks followed shortly behind that.
It might be new to those fellows, but in just this basin the technique has been around a lot longer than 10 years.
You can find it, but then you have to get a permit to produce it.
In a slightly different twist, I worked on an oil well in Nevada. We found some oil which couldn't be produced, but even more, we found...water. With just 200 ppm chlorides, it appeared like oil on the resistivity logs. Incredibly fresh, and coming out of ancient caves.
So, right there, in the middle of a desert valley complete with stringy looking mustangs trying to scratch enough grass up to eat, we were sitting on the means to transform the valley into a veritable Eden.
BLM lease. Plug it. You can't produce the water.
Ain't gummnint wonderful?
Here is a Research Article that maybe more enlightening.
http://www.lgs.lsu.edu/deploy/uploads/Tuscaloosa%20Marine%20Shale.pdf
Joe, never been involved with a horizontal well but my understanding is that the length of the laterals went big time mostly starting in the Barnett Shale with most of that mostly starting in the mid 90s. Almost a situation where the length of the laterals, the ability to more effective steer the bit, and the enormous multi stage fracks turned a matter of degree into [almost] a new game. Correct or ???
BTW, thanks for your perspective.
Nope horizontal drilling has been around for at least 20 years.
Hydrolic fracking was perfected by Mr. Mitchell in the Barnett Shale. It is quite a story for us geologists.
I can't say about the Barnett (never worked a Barnett well). The Austin Chalk laterals were starting to reach out there about then.
We were doing 1500 ft. laterals out of casing in the early '90s, with 4 1/2 inch bits, to give you an idea of the problems involved--smaller diameter drill strings affect steerability, and the tools wear out quicker. It wasn't long before we were drilling with six inch drill bits, larger mud motors, and heavier drill strings, (4-inch pipe instead of PH-8), and the laterals got longer as a result of both improved steerability and more reliable tools.
One of the big changes in there was the drill bits, which had been tri-cone bits, but were gradually replaced (with increasing rapidity) by new generation PDC (Polycrystalline Diamond Cutter) bits. Instead of having the risk of 'running the wheels off' (junk in the hole, and more often than not, an expensive sidetrack), the PDCs generally ringed out and just quit drilling.
Fewer bit trips, better MWD tools, 200 hour battery packs, and more durable mud motors have all led to longer laterals.
While the longest lateral I have personally worked was in the Bakken (roughly 12,500 ft. of lateral wellbore), I understand that some offshore efforts have eclipsed that by roughly a factor of three.
Staged fracs are a relatively recent development, but generally are done by running a liner in the lateral with swelling packers on the outside, and displacing the lateral wellbore with fresh water to swell the packers up just before the liner is 'set'. The packers swell up after the liner is in place, and then those packers are used to help isolate sections of the wellbore (outside the liner--packers are used inside the liner) to frac those sections individually, separately from the others. The process allows the more effective concentration of frac pressure, fluids, and proppants in specific areas, which in general, means that the whole lateral interval gets fracked instead of pressure, fluids, and proppants just following the paths of least resistance and leaving some parts of the formation relatively unaffected.
When laterals were short, this might not have mattered as much, but now, with two miles of lateral out there, distributing the effects more effectively means a better well, and more production in the end.
I think this is why recoveries of the estimated reserves in place have often exceeded the estimated recovery rates in initial studies.
With tremendous competition in the oil tool and service company marketplace, everyone is trying to do just a bit better than everyone else to achieve a market edge, so the hits just keep on coming. It is a high dollar game of 'can you top this', for high stakes, and result-oriented. (that means no screw-ups, too.)
Every new record is just another mark to shoot for, not laurels to sit on, because next month, someone else might be setting a new one if you don't break your own.
Some of the technologies being worked on and deployed include drilling assemblies which can be steered while rotating, near-bit measurements of formation parameters which enhance geosteering (navigational) capability, and always better bits and mud motors.
The other thing, seldom spoken of, is that horizontal drilling enables us to produce oil (and Gas) from under a much larger acreage with a smaller footprint than vertical wellbores. That includes from underneath natural obstacles such as large lakes. One ten acre drill site can permit production from an eight square mile area--or conceiveably more, with only one site, one feeder pipeline, one service road, etc.
The more environmentally friendly the industry gets, though, the more the environmentalists seem to object.
Well, my interest in the article was more because the formation runs underneath my old home town back in Louisiana, than in the technology (which I realize has been available for longer than people think). I hope the folks back home finally "hit paydirt". The original "Tuscaloosa Trend" play didn't reach far enough north for them to get "leased".
Me, too. One of the joys of my job is that if I do it well, it helps bring prosperity to some mighty nice folks, who do well with it.
Sure, there are the less nice folks, too, but it seems like sudden money is as much a curse to them as a blessing to the good.
Seems like there needs to be a "Poor Richard's Almanac" proverb about that. Money can turn a very few "good" folks "bad", but I've never heard of money making a no-account "good".
I think for the most part, money doesn't change a person's basic character, and I suspect those who seemed "good" and then turned, were probably just good at camouflage. .
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