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Q&A: Oil field leftovers don’t go to waste
Fuel Fix ^ | February 9, 2014 | Emily Pickrell

Posted on 02/10/2014 4:56:02 AM PST by thackney

Blake Scott, the founder and president of Scott Environmental Services, has developed a way to turn solid drilling waste into a material that can be used to pave oil field roads and rig pads. His Texas-based business, which recycles the waste in mud and drill cuttings, now operates in six other states. He described the work in a recent interview with FuelFix. Edited excerpts:

FuelFix: Where does the drilling waste you work with come from?

Scott: When you drill a well, the material you are drilling through is solid material, and is brought up by the drilling mud. It is separated, and the solid material is taken out is drill cuttings. Traditionally, drilling cuttings have been disposed? of either by being partially treated and spread out over a portion of land or they have been dragged off-site for disposal.

FuelFix: What inspired you to develop the recycling technology?

Scott: We began as an oil field contractor, loading material off- site. As we watched this, we thought that surely there is a value to this material, and began to look at other kinds of use. It had some properties that could create construction materials. We realized something could be created to let the operators reuse the material in roads and drill pads a well site requires. They would not have to pay for disposal, or buy new construction materials.

FuelFix: How did you develop the technology, and what challenges did you face?

Scott: We began by looking at the basic science behind turning the waste cuttings into material suitable for roads. It all hinges on the science of solidification and stabilization. The development of this idea took us several years. We had to do quite a bit of research on the materials and learn how to sequester the contaminants and what kind of geotechnical properties you need to create. It involves both civil engineering and environmental engineering.

To test the demands on these roads, we went out and counted the number of loads used to hook up a drilling rig, to better understand what we had to design and the traffic it would have to handle. For a road, how strong you can make it depends on the thickness of the material you use, and if you don’t get it right, it will fail. These problems mean that you could have deep imprints on the road from tire tracks, or that it could move and not be a stable structure.

FuelFix: How would you like to see your company grow?

Scott: We would like to be able to expand what we are offering geographically and expand our offerings from a service perspective. As drilling increases, operators will become more interested in making sure their waste is handled in a way they feel comfortable with.

One of the traditional methods of dealing with a lot of waste is to spread it over a large piece of property. But why would you do that? Why would you consume 20 acres of area, when you can take that material and reuse it to build your own drill pad or road? It is like the waste never existed if you are using it for your own construction purposes.


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: energy; naturalgas; oil
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1 posted on 02/10/2014 4:56:02 AM PST by thackney
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To: thackney

Excellent.


2 posted on 02/10/2014 4:57:48 AM PST by WayneS (Respect the 2nd Amendment; Repeal the 16th (and 17th))
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To: thackney

The really neat thing is that the road material glows at night so the truckers don’t ever drive off the road.....just kidding.


3 posted on 02/10/2014 5:01:00 AM PST by BRL
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To: thackney
But...but...but what about the endangered Texas rockworm?

More disregard for the environment by the mean old oil companies !

< /leftist drivel >

4 posted on 02/10/2014 5:03:32 AM PST by Izzy Dunne (Hello, I'm a TAGLINE virus. Please help me spread by copying me into YOUR tag line.)
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To: BRL

Compounding the interest. Recycling the by-products of your primary production is the very essence of sustainable capitalism.

Similar to capturing the “waste heat” from a power plant to heat homes or use in a secondary process, and eventually allowing very little to escape to the surrounding environment.


5 posted on 02/10/2014 5:07:17 AM PST by alloysteel (Obamacare - Death and Taxes now available online. One-stop shopping at its best!)
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To: WayneS

This is pretty smart of the guy, if he can make money from it. Cuttings are nothing but finely crushed rock, though, so it’s not quite the difficult matter they make it out to be.
The “mud” he is referring to is actually a sophisticated multi-purpose fluid, custom designed for each hole (it’s not a well until it’s finished out)- but it looks like mud, so that’s what it’s called.


6 posted on 02/10/2014 5:08:57 AM PST by TexasBarak (I aim to misbehave!)
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To: Izzy Dunne

Never understood the leftist mind. Plenty of them I have seen have expressed how much they dislike oil. Ironically, one of them asked what that marvelous ingredient I was able to use to waterproof a box for a controlled humidity in a greenhouse experiment, turns out that nut failed to realize where asphalt comes from. Asphalt is good stuff for sealing out water BTW, so long as it doesn’t freeze.


7 posted on 02/10/2014 5:21:27 AM PST by Morpheus2009
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To: thackney

Landfills have been using it for cover. They don’t have to use as much topsoil


8 posted on 02/10/2014 5:43:10 AM PST by cork (Gun control = hitting what you aim at)
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To: thackney
Trying to see an advantage to this or a purpose and I see none, it would be far cheaper for me to bring in caliche for roads or pads. By the time you've seperated the cutting from the mud you don't have allot left. As far as spreading it over a wide area we do not we just roll the pit walls over, plant over the top and we're done. I see them with a backhoe digging out the pit and that seems foolish, the time to seperate would be during the drilling process with a shaker. Again I repeat theres not that much solids remaing after completion, certainly not enought to build a usable pad let alone roads going to it. Looks more like somebody is chasing grant money!
9 posted on 02/10/2014 5:43:36 AM PST by Dusty Road
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To: Dusty Road

let me also add that as a Texas Boy he should know better than to say what he did, the RRC does nor require us to remove the material. There are specific guidelines as to how we deal with reserve pits and none of it requires removing material from the site. Some states are different, NM won’t even let me dig pits so I use shell shakers and steel mud pits. This might make a little sense in that process.


10 posted on 02/10/2014 5:49:25 AM PST by Dusty Road
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To: Dusty Road
One sentence in there makes me think he is just looking at locations that required it to be taken off-site. For those locations, this may make economic sense.

We began as an oil field contractor, loading material off- site. As we watched this, we thought that surely there is a value to this material, and began to look at other kinds of use.

11 posted on 02/10/2014 5:55:31 AM PST by thackney (life is fragile, handle with prayer)
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To: TexasBarak
"The mud he is referring to"

Im no expert on drilling mud, but I tend to relate drilling mud with clay, and I tend to relate clay with slippery when wet.

12 posted on 02/10/2014 6:01:05 AM PST by Ben Ficklin
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To: Ben Ficklin

Industrial furnace slag works better than crushed limestone for covering a long dirt farm driveway.Cheaper too.

Some companies are making money doing this as well.


13 posted on 02/10/2014 8:51:02 AM PST by TurboZamboni (Marx smelled bad and lived with his parents .)
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To: Ben Ficklin

Drilling mud can definitely be slippery- in fact, a substance is sometimes added to “flush” the hole that is extremely viscous and slippery (and white in color- yes, it has an obscene slang term attached to it).


14 posted on 02/10/2014 3:37:03 PM PST by TexasBarak (I aim to misbehave!)
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To: alloysteel
Imagine now ? if you could recapture the wasted heat from just driving your car or truck ?
2/3rds of the gasoline that you buy is wasted going out the exhaust and cooling system.
Now imagine if you could, well BMW did, develop a thermal electric generator that could be used on a car's exhaust system to charge batteries ? or be used to power some of your car's electrical systems taking away some of the need for the alternator taking power away from the engine and save gasoline ?
Believe it or not you can even cook food on your car's exhaust manifold and there are some people on YouTube that have done just that.
I know right now it's not practical but the wasted heat from your cooling system could be hooked up to some kind of heat exchanger to heat your house or be used to for hot water.
15 posted on 02/10/2014 5:12:49 PM PST by American Constitutionalist
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To: Izzy Dunne
Ohh come on now ? don't you know the rockworm took a order for some of that drill leftover material and want to build condos with it ?.
The rockworms can build some nice swimming pools to with that material.
16 posted on 02/10/2014 5:15:23 PM PST by American Constitutionalist
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To: alloysteel
Bingo Dingo Ringo, nothing goes to waste, re purpose everything.
Even waste saw dust, or grass clippings, even leaves off of trees people have found ways to make pellets or briquettes with them and burn them in stoves, or even run engines with wood waste.
Even cow poop can be dried and burned as fuel.
Decades ago when they tear down a building all that waste went to a landfill, but now even old concrete is broken up and reused.
I think even old asphalt can be ground up reheated and reused.
17 posted on 02/10/2014 5:19:02 PM PST by American Constitutionalist
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To: cork
Nowadays the only thing that they put in landfills is organic stuff..... stuff like steel, plastics, paper, old electronics are either recycled or sent to a processing place to reuse some of the metals.
Used motor oil is sent to be reprocessed, transmission fluid, anti freeze, paint, solvents... all that stuff.
At least where we live they can't place that stuff in landfills anymore.
18 posted on 02/10/2014 5:23:11 PM PST by American Constitutionalist
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To: American Constitutionalist

Ground rock sounds fairly inorganic...


19 posted on 02/10/2014 5:24:50 PM PST by Paladin2
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To: Paladin2
As in crushed grounded rock ? is that correct ? or rock that is in the ground ?
Depends on how large it is and how cheap you can get it, can be used for driveways.

20 posted on 02/10/2014 5:31:40 PM PST by American Constitutionalist
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