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Patrick Sawyer
climber
Originally California now Ireland
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So Base104, the area around Twilight (my mom's farm, now mostly in the ownership of a good cousin, though we have retained a bit) outside of Wheeling WVA, is a 'safe bet'. I don't like the idea of us still relying on fossil fuels (though I have, somewhat benefitted financially from it), but I am still a realist (I think).
I just know if the sh*t hits the fan (in Ireland, EU and even US) that I still have a plot of (safe) land that Jennie and I can settle on. Just a shame the sea is so far away from WVA, after all, Jen grew up near the Irish Sea and myself the Bay Area, but we do have Wheeling Creek coursing through our land.
And yes, in these days and time if Chesapeake can return me some money, as long as environmental standards are kept, I'll gladly bank the check.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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The problem is that the hysteria is so wrong.
When each of the gas company executives has a fracing well all around their homes and they don't truck in their drinking/bathing water…. Then I may consider the hysteria wrong… Until then (and I know it is highly unlikely that it will ever happen) I have to say no thanks, do proper studying, back to the drawing board, find a safe way to gather energy….
And now that I think about it….
Why don't they, the gas companies, go in search of their gas in major population centers?
Is it because there just happens to be no gas available in major population centers?
Is it because they (gas companies) know that its not safe, and they would never hear the end of it from the populations within those centers?
I think we all know the answers. Its too bad that even on a climbing site there are folks who would advocate such destruction of the environment...
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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I think we all know the answers. Its too bad that even on a climbing site there are folks who would advocate such destruction of the environment...
Do we? Can we not conclude that, say, farming is equally unsafe because we don't see commercial farms in the middle of population centers?
Those who understand economics understand the nonesense of your statement.
John
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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That is pretty funny. Oklahoma City lies on top of the Oklahoma City oil and gas field, the biggest in the state. There is still drilling going on regularly inside the city limits.
A company that I do some work for has been in a number of wells in the NW part of the city....all frac'd. Big fracs.
That is also the rich part of town. The entire BOD of two of the biggest natural gas companies in the country live there. I can drive you by their houses. I have seen Aubrey McClendon's house, anyway. He is the CEO of Chesapeake. Devon Energy and SandRidge are also in OKC. That covers much of the biggest horizontal companies in the US.
There are wells drilled beneath Lake Hefner, the city water supply. The city likes the royalty checks. You can't use any motor boat on that lake. Sailing and kiting only.
For me, this is kind of like arguing evolution with a crowd of people from 1000 BC. It is just too complicated.
I'll make a funny post here in a sec if you want to read it.
If you want to see a website that is totally full of propaganda, go look at this site:
http://www.anwr.org/
This is where all of the ditto heads go for their info on ANWR.
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Whoa. Just saw Jingy's last sentence.
Buddy, I wish you were saying that to my face.
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onyourleft
climber
Smog Angeles
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I've been reading this thread with a somewhat detached curiosity until I got to this:
The only place that I know of with a problem of radioactive formation water is the Permian Basin in SW Texas. They had been using old production tubing for fences, playgrounds, you name it. Then they figured out that the scale accumulation in the tubing was loaded with NORM. Naturally occuring radioactive material. So that was a major freakout that was frantically cleaned up by removing all of that tubing. This was discovered in the seventies and is now well known.
My father was a production engineer for Shell Oil for over forty years and I was a child of the oil fields. As an aspiring hippie/environmentalist we had "lively" discussions over the record of the oil industry. I cut him some slack since it was clear to me that my middle-class upbringing was financed by big oil. In 1970, my dad was transferred to the Permian Basin, and I finished high school in Midland, TX.
In the summer of 1972, after my freshman year of college, my dad secured me a summer job at a plant in Midland called "Tube-Kote." The plant received daily truckloads of 40' joints of 2 1/2" oilfield tubing that had been pulled from wells after the tubing had become clogged with unmentionable gack and was now unusable. The joints of tubing were loaded on a rail car, run into a massive gas oven, baked at hellacious temps for several hours to burn out the gack. Then the insides of the tubes were sandblasted with long wands and all the charred detritus was blown out the ends using compressed air. The final step was to spray the inside of the tubes with a plastic/teflon coating and the re-furbed tubes were trucked back to the oilfields for a presumed new and longer life.
And now you're telling me all that gack that I burned, breathed, and shoveled all day every day for an entire summer was likely radioactive???
Something else to worry about, thanks.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Oklahoma City lies on top of the Oklahoma City oil and gas field, the biggest in the state. There is still drilling going on regularly inside the city limits.
A company that I do some work for has been in a number of wells in the NW part of the city....all frac'd. Big fracs.
That is also the rich part of town. The entire BOD of two of the biggest natural gas companies in the country live there. I can drive you by their houses. I have seen Aubrey McClendon's house, anyway. He is the CEO of Chesapeake.
Good evidence BASE104.
Good post.
So, you mean that hydro-frac is for the most part safe as can be. I'm assuming then that the cases of some (many?) populations drinking water being contaminated with unknown substances (mainly because the substances are proprietary secrets) is rare in your view, and possibly due to the shady practices of those companies that you don't work for....
Would you say that it is always best to do the frac anywhere and everywhere possible then?
Yes, it is complicated.
Yes, I have limited (i.e. not industry specific) information about the process of hydrolic fracturing and gas extraction.
Does this mean I cannot or should not raise questions about it?
Instead of heralding the successes of those companies that have extracted without incident of their secret poisons leaching into ground waters you be better served by raising the boats of those companies that leave destruction in their wakes. Sort of bringing up all companies to the level of those successful ones.
Also, minimizing the dangers never a good thing. Think how it would be if anyone who started climbing thought that they would live forever by doing so.
It is because it is inherantly dangerous that it should be taken seriously.... becuase it is.
Don't take my words personally. I am an idiot, and words on a forum have never meant a thing to anyone outside of those who have read the words.
Good day sir
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GuapoVino
Trad climber
All Up In Here
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Whoa, I hope I didn't add to the hysteria or throw fuel on the fire by asking my questions or posting those links. That wasn't my intent. I was curious about how that one particular event happened and turned out. Some of you guys turned my question into proof that wells are dangerous.
I live in the area that Base talked about with the wells in a metro area. They're pretty common. They're almost like (but not as numerous as) a telephone pole, a fire hydrant or an electrical transformer. They're just there and you drive by them and don't even notice them. I've seen wells right in the middle of housing developments. The wells were there first and the development was built around them.
I develop land, or used to before the economy went down the tubes. Most people don't think twice about living in proximity to a well, as long as it's not too close to their house (asthetics/view). We have bought land before that has a well on it and developed around it. In those cases really the only thing you're worried about is will the location of the well make it difficult to lay out streets/lots/etc or make it an unavoidable focal point as you drive in. We looked at one property that had three wells on it. Unfortunately the location of the wells made it almost impossible to lay out a neighborhood. If they had just drilled the wells all over at one side it would have worked out, of course when they drilled them many decades ago the land was in the middle of nowhere and the last thing on their mind was the future sale-ability of the land for a purpose other than agriculture. The owner is not going to be able to sell his land as long as the wells are there, but it's not because they're hazerdous. It's because they're all in the "wrong" spot.
I also built a house for a friend of mine who is a petroleum engineer. He is on a water well. An oil well went in about one mile from his house. He wasn't concerned about it. I guess that says something.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Studly - This is really only a small percentage of a very small percentage of a fraction of all the fracing operations going on all over the US….
This is certainly no real indication that hydro-fracing is not completely safe, or very minimally dangerous.
Just listen to Base104…
Base - Sorry if it seems that I am still not a believer in the line I'm being fed. I know that anyone making money in the business can hardly be an impartial judge to any of it… Just ask anyone on an oil-rig if drilling for oil is safe (not just for people, but for ecosystems as well). What you think they are going to say?
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Whoa. Stop the presses. You guys just missed it!
The link above to gas in groundwater is absolutely not to be dismissed. That new paper was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the best journal in the U.S. Peer review in that journal is extremely thorough. It is the cream of scientific journals.
So I emailed a buddy of mine at Chesapeake and said that every Marcellus well should have pre-installed monitoring wells installed around it.
He just emailed me back, and Chesapeake is already doing it, and has been for some time. I need to ask whether they are sampling existing water wells or actually drilling a network of monitoring wells. Chesapeake is that serious about it, though. No modern large company wants a pollution problem. They just want to drill to the deep gas and produce it with no fuss. For a company like Chesapeake, even one incident isn't worth it.
Now it should be noted that in the paper they didn't find any evidence of actual frac fluid in the groundwater sampling. That doesn't surprise me one bit.
The PNAS paper couldn't tell where the gas was coming from, so this needs to be figured out. With a ton of monitoring wells it should be fairly easy.
No way to know without really getting after the study and trying to verify the results in the PNAS paper, though.
The PNAS also has some sweet global warming articles. Papers in super reputable peer reviewed journals can't be dismissed with a wave of the hand. Rush Limbaugh can say it all he wants, but he can't change physical evidence.
Believe it or not, there is great evidence of CO2 caused global warming in the fossil record. Unfortunately it gets shouted down by the deniers, who will never accept anything. Who know this? Mainly the petroleum geologists who work the subsurface and very old rocks. I will tell you that most petroleum geologists are conservative Limbaugh clones, though. I feel pretty lonely sometimes.
I accepted human induced climate change back in the nineties. The science was that good even back then.
Such is science when you have a bunch of non scientists interpreting the evidence however they like, though. Limbaugh or Exxon or Frack Action can get it all wrong, and nobody knows the difference.
So here is some good science that needs to be addressed.
I know the probable source, but I will wait on the science. I will say that this most likely has nothing to do with the frac. Those big freshwater fracs are the most benign fracs of them all. You ought to see a big crosslinked gelled saltw#ter or an acid frac or a CO2 or Nitrogen foam frac.
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Yeah, disposal wells have been associated with earthquakes for decades. It is really rare, but it isn't difficult to correlate to the disposal well. The earthquakes are very shallow, up in the sedimentary rocks.
The Ohio case, just from the basic numbers that I read, make me 90% certain that it was caused by the disposal well.
There are zillions of disposal wells. Almost all oil wells also produce saltw#ter. Some wells make thousands of barrels per day of saltw#ter.
They either have a disposal well on the location or truck it to a commercial disposal well. Those wells are tightly regulated and have to go through annual casing integrity tests. That is called an MIT, or mechanical integrity test.
The earquake/disposal well link really came about from a couple of hazardous waste disposal wells at Rocky Flats in Denver, where they work with nukes and stuff. There were earthquakes associated clearly with the disposal wells and they were plugged. Earthquakes stopped. There used to be a few hazardous waste disposal wells for industry, not oil and gas related. I am pretty sure that they have all been shut down now. That was an old and bad idea.
The Ohio well will be shut in and plugged, trust me. It was shut in right after the earthquake. What happens is that if you inject with enough pressure you will pressure up your disposal zone. There are old faults all over the place in the interior US. If you increase the pore pressure it can lubricate the old fault plane and cause it to slip. That said, I know of many, many disposal wells right next to faults and they have no problem.
There is also a big correlation with geothermal wells and earthquakes as well. It is really common on some hydrothermal injection wells, which is clean energy.
The difference between a frac job and an injection well is this: The biggest frac jobs may inject 80,000 barrels of water, and the well immediately flows most of that right back in the first month. The injection wells may inject more than 10,000 barrels per day. And they do it for decades. A barrel is 42 gallons.
We have a perfect disposal zone in the mid continent: The Arbuckle/Ellenburger formation. It is super porous and permable, and usually at least a thousand feet thick. You can pump water into that sucker until the end of time without pressuring it up. Unfortunately, the Marcellus area is not blessed with such a good disposal zone. So what to do with all of that frac water that flows back? That is the real problem in the Marcellus.
There has to be at least 100,000 saltw#ter disposal wells in the country. The earthquake cases are super rare. The solution is to stop the injection in that particular well.
A basic principle of science is this: correlation does not equal causation. If you go off all half cocked on causation you run a huge risk of not determing the true cause. That goes for all sciences. There is experience, although uncommon, of injection wells causing earthquakes. The location of the disposal well to the Ohio earthquake and the shallow depth that it occurred makes it likely that it was caused by the disposal well. I don't know for certain, but I am sure that they have it nailed after a week of study. It isn't THAT complicated.
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Yeah, as for what people call "Peak Oil," most geologists, and even bean counters, in the industry now think that the world has already passed its production peak.
That is not the really scary number. The scary number is when demand exceeds supply.
We are so insanely addicted to oil that it is like air. If you have a room full of people and the room is running out of air, people will pay anything for one of those last breaths. Oil prices are going to do the same thing. Rise to insane levels. The only reason that gas is expensive is because of demand.
We will see it in our lifetimes.
The way the US can stop the bloodshed is simple: use less.
We used to use a little over 20 million barrels per day. During the Arab oil crisis in the seventies, Carter put in all kinds of conservation laws. Does anyone remember him giving talks to the nation in a sweater? Everyone got behind it and turned their thermostats down to 68 in the winter instead of 72. Tiny cars like the Civic ruled the market and Detroit gas guzzlers went out of style.
Result? Carter took us from 20+ million bbls/day down to 15+ million bbls/day. That has never been remotely reached before or since. Prices crashed in the early eighties and gas was cheap again. Everyone started driving gas hogs again. Even now everyone thinks that they need a Dodge Ram or SUV. Result? We now consume more than 20 million bbls/day all over again.
That is the secret energy policy of Dick Cheney: Cheap oil at any price.
We can cut our dependence on foreign oil by a massive amount just from changing our habits. The damn Republicans keep blocking lower CAFE standards, though. They are neanderthals when it comes to energy and climate change.
No lie. Carpool when you can. Buy a high mileage car. Don't fly too much because that is the most fuel intensive form of transportation of them all.
We should also be using natural gas as a transportation fuel. It is the least carbon emitting of any of the fossil fuels and it is abundant and cheap. It won't last forever, but it will bridge us towards truly clean energy. US oil production is declining rapidly and nothing will really change that. "Drill baby, drill" is the biggest load of bullsh#t.
The only fuel we have in abundance here is coal and natural gas. Coal is filthy, but it is by far the most efficient fuel for electricity generation. Odds are that your computer is burning coal at this very second.
They even build coal fired power plants in Texas and Oklahoma. That really makes the natural gas industry ill.
Everone is all hung up on fracs. The real pollution comes out of all of our tailpipes. I wish it was purple so people could see it.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A race of corn eaters
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The way the US can stop the bloodshed is simple: use less.
Yeah, sure, and let competing nations get a leg up on us? That will be the argument for the alternative strategy, spoken or unspoken.
I'm sure you've heard of the "tragedy of the commons" and game theory.
Base, what's your view on the value trend of the oil companies as century ends and oil runs out? If you've got stock when do you get out?
.....
re: Carter and his leadership in conservation
I'm sure you've heard of "the Carter Curse". Today's political leadership wants no part of it.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Yeah, as for what people call "Peak Oil," most geologists, and even bean counters, in the industry now think that the world has already passed its production peak.
That is not the really scary number. The scary number is when demand exceeds supply.
I know of no economist who disagrees with your first paragraph, BASE, but I'm not sure what your last sentence means.
By "demand" do you mean quantity demanded? If so, that (and the quantity supplied) depends on price. Thus an inequality of supply and demand implies an inappropriate price. If you mean a schedule of quantities demanded at various prices (or quantities supplied at various prices), then an inequality of supply and demand follows by definition -- you would not expect to find the same quantity supplied and demanded at any particular price. That would occur only at an equilibrium price.
What I find scary is governmental attempts to manipulate petroleum and fuel prices (usually to make them too low). Since most of the economic players are well aware of the oil extraction situation, and are similarly aware that dependence on petroleum-based fuels at current levels is unsustainable, current prices, supply contracts, and long/short positions already reflect anticipated future events.
Despite this, I still read on this forum and elsewhere analyses (not yours) that imply that the price will stay at the current level, then suddenly jump to infinity when we "discover" we're out of petroleum. In fact, the market's actors already know we're out of petroleum; they just don't know when. Long-term prices reflect the participants' best guesses as to when.
While I can justify CAFE standards, for example, by noting that markets discount future pain, I personally think the real advantage of things like CAFE comes elsewhere. Specifically, one of the disadvantages of driving most modern low-consumption vehicles is their relatively slight mass. In a collision with a vehicle of greater mass, the more fuel-efficient but lighter vehicle usually ends up with the worst of it. CAFE, for all its other faults (and there are many), is at least a way to deal with the external safety cost to other drivers of potentially colliding with a tank disguised as an SUV, say.
I realize this has little to do with the topic at hand, but I personally think the topic of "peak oil" has had way too much sway in certain non-economic circles, and led to some often absurd analyses.
Thanks again for your excellent contributions on this thread.
John
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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I haven't checked this thread out because I figured it would just be the
usual name-calling. Imagine my pleasant surprise to see reasoned debate!
I better go lie down.
ps
Argentina is going to take another run at the Falklands because they think
they're going to find gas and/or oil out there. That's what rising demand
will do!
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Argentina is going to take another run at the Falklands because they think
they're going to find gas and/or oil out there. That's what rising demand
will do!
And China is going all out to become a naval power over the Spratly Islands and other off shore sources.
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Methane is indeed a powerful greenhouse gas. If you look into it the only thing good about that is that Methane breaks down within 15 years or so. The only real way to sequester CO2 is for little tiny foraminifera and other bugs with a carbonate shell to die and rain down to the ocean floor.
OK. Peak Oil. This is much simpler than it sounds. The peak refers to the maximum production capacity.
For instance, oil was discovered in the US around the turn of the century (for practical reasons, that date is good). There was a huge amount of drilling, and with new discoveries the production capacity of the US grew. It far exceeded demand at several points and was actually cheaper than a barrel of water.
Anyway, the production capacity grew and grew and grew with more discoveries. Back in the early seventies, the production capacity in the US peaked at X number of bbls per day. It has been falling ever since.
Production capacity is one thing. So many bbls per day.
Demand is a totally different number. X number of bbls per day of consumption.
It is very easy to look back and actually see the peak in production capacity in the US, and the US has already produced more oil than any country other than the total reserves of Saudi Arabia. 190 billion bbls or so.
Lets say that production capacity was 100 million bbls per day. Demand is 80 or 90 worldwide. I haven't looked it up in a while.
So production capacity peaks at 101 million bbls per day. There are new discoveries all of the time, but depletion of older fields is greater than new discoveries are taking place. So lets say that 101 million bbls per day is the number.
You can drill all you want and not increase production capacity. Most production comes from the super giant fields that were discovered pre-1950 or so.
Production capacity starts to fall from that 101 million bbls per day number. Production has peaked and will now fall until the end of time.
Demand is still 90 million bbls per day, so even though production has peaked, you still have 10 million bbls/day of excess capacity out there. Controlling the spigot on this 10 million bbl per day is entirely in the hands of the few countries with the excess oil: Saudi Arabia mainly.
Since production is now falling, supply will now start falling until it meets the demand number.
When the production capacity number hits the consumption number, you then have a problem. When demand starts to exceed supply, it will be bloodshed. Oil is like air for our species at this point in time.
See? They are actually unrelated numbers.
You can't control the world's physical supply of oil. You can control, to a large extent, the world's demand of oil. So if everyone on the planet pulls their heads out of their ass, you can take demand down to 60 or 70 million bbls/day.
So the production number is really only important when it closes in on the demand number. That is when you will see the price of oil go through the sky.
It will be a good thing in my mind. Humans are nuts. We keep on burning fossil fuels because of one thing: greed. It is cheaper than the alternatives. When prices go through the roof, that will be the only time that people act. There are no altruists out there to speak of. Humans will only reduce their consumption of oil because of price.
A sad thing to say, but it is clear as hell.
Look at what you are driving. Look at how much flying you are doing, as that is the least efficient. Start sharing rides.
I know that you can afford to drive a big pickup or SUV, but do you really NEED that vehicle? My plumber does, but I don't.
It is coming, my friends. Most geologists that I know believe that we have reached our production peak already. As it falls, it will meet the demand number. From there it will be bloodshed.
This country funds a massive military that has a couple of aims. The first is protection of the US from attack. The only real way that will happen is with nukes. So we have subs and silos and a retaliation force. Mexico or Canada isn't going to invade us, and if they did, it would require a much smaller military to handle it.
So we have some huge number of Nimitz class aircraft carriers, with at least one or two always hanging out in the Middle East. We are fighting two wars in the middle east.
Other than blowing the Taliban to bits, which was achieved in the first year of the war in Afghanistan, it is all about oil.
You may think that oil companies control this card game, but they don't. Who controls this game is the hungry gullet of consumption. I will defend that statement until the end of time.
A really great read on oil and its relationship with power can be found in the book "The Prize." I highly recommend it if you want to understand oil.
--happily meeting the hydrocarbon needs of Supertopo since 1987.
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