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golsen
Social climber
kennewick, wa
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 9, 2011 - 04:14pm PT
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I understand what you are saying jfailing. But abandoned casing will rust around the whatever material is used for sealing the well. Whether or not that is a significant enough conduit for groundwater migration through the now non-existant casing will be dependent upon a number of factors such as pressure, gradient, etc. of the affected aquifers.
My main point is that proprietary or unregulated substances should not be allowed into the fracking process. In my opinion, the rules about adding any substances to anything underground should be similar to those above ground. 50 years ago we also though it was ok to dump into the oceans. Out of sight out of mind. We seem to have the same mentality here and my concern is that it will come back to bite us.
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jfailing
Trad climber
Lone Pine
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Lostinshanghai - the drilling program you're referring to never actually made it to the point of hydrofracking... I think they had a grip of problems with the well they were drilling, got stuck a few times, and abandoned the project. So no, they didn't create any earthquakes from that particular project.
Technically it is possible to induce seismicity through fracking - we like to call it "microseismicity." And there are measures that folks can take to minimize sizable seismic events, like drilling through a known "smaller" fault. Ideally you frack a seismically stressed area that will open up fractures that have been healed by secondary mineralization - essentially just speeding up a natural process.
The reason that the Geysers project rose so much controversy over inducing earthquakes, was because it's close to Santa Rosa. People were flipping out over the drilling folks causing earthquakes... Even though... They freaking live ON the San Andreas fault... NIMBY I guess.
Edit added:
Base - 1st, I gotta say sorry for no believing a word you've got to say about the subject of hydrolic-fracturing.
Drilling/fracking is a lot different than prostitution. One reason this subject has become so controversial is because people don't actually really know what's going on. They listen to the media and Gasland and base their knowledge off of that... So refusing to listen to Base just because he works in the industry and may be biased is silly.
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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No. Not nuts. Risk/benefit analysis says drill baby drill.
http://myprogressnews.com/content/marcellus-shale-and-horizontal-drilling
Underneath our feet are virtually underground “vaults of money” just waiting
to be unlocked. Land owners who hold mineral rights to these “vaults” have
seen their stock rise exponentially over the past years.
A common ten dollar per acre offer several years ago, can now yield up to
three thousand dollars per acre in our reading area. A 100 acre property
once worth one-thousand dollars in mineral rights, today can yield $300,000
plus royalty payments.
....many companies utilize a technique called “Rotary Steerable”.
Essentially this method rotates the whole drill string instead of just the
mud motor. Rotary Steerable enables a driller to drill faster as it
provides a better penetration through the formation. And at an
approximate $25,000 per day for a horizontal rig, quicker translates into
a higher profit margin.
Once the horizontal drilling is compete, the next phase or the frac begins.
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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jfailing
Can't recall but embedded in a couple million of my files.
Look as of today, they had one in March as well and as you say people living in the area still think it is of this. Of course you can tell them anything and they will believe it.
Three earthquakes strike Gorda plate near northern California
December 9, 2011 – CALIFORNIA -
Three earthquakes rumbled through Northern California late Wednesday and early Thursday, but the temblors probably weren’t connected, geologists said.
A magnitude 4.0 quake hit around 9:19 p.m. Wednesday roughly 85 miles southwest of Eureka. The quake was 1.2 miles below the ocean floor, geologists said. Then just before 2 a.m. Thursday, a 3.3-magnitude quake struck about 25 miles north of Santa Rosa in The Geysers, where geothermal energy reaches the surface. Roughly seven hours later, at 9:16 a.m., a magnitude 3.8 quake hit 25 miles south of Eureka – 60 miles from where the Wednesday night earthquake was centered.
No damage was reported in any of the temblors. The collection of quakes was probably nothing more than coincidence, said David Schwartz, an earthquake geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. “It is very hard to say that there is any cause and effect between them,” Schwartz said. “In any 24-hour period, you could get quite a number of earthquakes in California.”
A major earthquake can set off a chain reaction, Schwartz said. But “these quakes are so small and their effects are so local, that I have trouble believing that they are related.’ The earthquakes erupted along the tension point of the lower Juan de Fuca, or what is known as the Gorda plate as can be seen in the 2001 map above. –SF Gate
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Sierra Ledge Rat
Social climber
Retired to Appalachia
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Dec 15, 2011 - 11:23am PT
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We are getting innundated with fracking wells here in Appalachia.
Our nice, quiet rural areas are now populated with noisy steel towers that run 24-hours a day and are brightly lit. There is one well 2 miles from my home. I used to be able to see the stars from my back deck, but there there is so much light at the well I can't even see the stars anymore. And when I lie in bed at night all I can hear is the noise from the well site.
The politicians are in the pockets of industry. Whatever solution they are pumping into the ground has been declared "proprietary information" by law. The mining companies don't have to tell anyone what they are pumping into the ground and it is unregulated.
One of the local towns passed a law prohibiting fracking within city limits, and were promptly hit with a $5 billion lawsuit from the industry.
Our quiet country roads are now busy byways, full of large trucks and HALIBURTON pickup trucks with out-of-state license plates speeding at 70 m.p.h. through our formerly quiet neigborhoods where the speed limit is 40 m.p.h.
I had one of these large solution trucks pass me on a double-yellow line even though there was on-coming traffic. He didn't care, he just made everyone get out of his way. I was doing 55 m.p.h in a 55 zone and he passed my like I was standing still. The on-coming cars were forced off the road by the truck. The police won't do anything.
Don't you love progress!
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Fat Paul
Trad climber
Right Coast
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Dec 15, 2011 - 09:34pm PT
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An important aspect of fracking that nobody seems to recognize is the amount of water that is being diverted from watersheds to facilitate the fracking process. Millions of gallons of water are used for a single well. This water is adulterated with the fracking fluids and is no longer a viable source of drinking water. Multiply this by the 1000's of wells being installed, and it becomes evident how much water is being lost in this process. The public has no idea what is at stake here, as the demand for water continues to grow while its availability shrinks.
Another important trend to watch is the purchase of public water supplies by private entities. It is likely that water rates will increase in areas where these diversions are occurring as the water resource becomes depleted.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Dec 15, 2011 - 11:13pm PT
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Are EIR's required in Appalachia?
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Dec 16, 2011 - 02:34am PT
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Greedy villains? What planet are you on?
I'm not a greedy villain. I drive an old beater, am comfortable with the science behind climate change (got over that one in the mid-nineties), and give money to anyone who asks for it on the street if I have any.
I am reading the EPA report right now. It was prepared at a facility in my boyhood hometown. My dad used to work at that lab, as well as my best frien's dad and my scoutmaster. It is about twenty miles from the Arkoma Basin, which has been drilled like a pin cusion for shale gas. There have been no pollution problems that I am aware of in the Arkoma, but there were surely surface spills and that kind of stuff.
You guys just don't understand the first thing about geology, or at least petroleum geology (and all of the permeability and pressure analysis) and engineering of modern wellbore design. I haven't heard of a single problem in Oklahoma, but we aren't the biggest shale gas state. We do drill a lot of other zones horizontally now though.
I was in a meeting today. Part of it covered fracturing efficiency in the various lithofacies in this play, which is oil. Only idiots are drilling for gas right now. 99% of those shale gas wells aren't making their money back. They are just there to hold the leases and the reserves in the ground. When gas prices come up they will drill the increased density wells. Usually 6 to 8 per square mile, parallel. The fracture height and length is limited by physics, and those wells can only drain a couple of hundred feet around the wellbore in a 300 foot thick shale. These shales aren't just any shales, either. For a sedimentary basin to produce, you have to have an organic rich source rock, typically shales full of dead algae, bury it to a sufficient depth to reach a temp/pressure window to cook the carbon into oil and gas, and that rock sources billions of barrels and many trillions of cubic feet of gas.
In Oklahoma, the Devonian Woodford Shale is the source rock for almost all oil in the state. Oil and gas also migrated up into the TX Panhandle and the entire state of Kansas as well. You can type the oil back to that one rock layer, the Woodford. I could show you how to find the Woodford on a geophysical log in thirty seconds.
It covers vast areas, but there are only certain areas where it is in the optimum thermal maturity window to be full of gas. It isn't much of an oil shale like the Bakken in North Dakota because of lack of a really good natural fracture set, and the pore throat size barely allows a methane molecule to migrate to the induced fracture.
On top of the Woodford you have..Several hundred feet of Mississippian aged limestones that are also good horizontal targets. You have to stage frac the Miss as well. Above that lies the entire Pennsylvanian package, which is filled with porous zones that either contain hydrocarbons or saltw#ter. Then you have the Permian section which includes a thousand foot thick salt/anhydrite layer. 12,000 feet of rock above the targeted Woodford, which is maybe 150 to 400 feet thick.
So I am in this meeting and we were trying to figure out the optimal way to drill and treat this zone. A lot of science goes into a possible new play area. It is so intense.
You probably don't know about this, because the newspapers don't know jack, but we were checking out micro seismic data sets of horizontal frac jobs in this lithofacies group. Yep. You can lay out a geophone array just like shooting a 3D seismic cube, and rather than using vibe trucks as an energy source, you listen to the rock fracturing. It isn't like you could put a glass to your ear, lay it on the floor and hear it. This is sensitive stuff.
You see a 3D model of where the fractures are going. The entire point is to fracture the pay zone. If you get out of it, you are risking fracturing into an adjacent saltw#ter bearing formation and just getting a saltw#ter well. Otherwise known as a dry hole.
All but about 5 fractures stayed in zone, and the ones that didn't went maybe fifty feet outside into dense limestone. There were areas where the frac job was not efficiently fracturing the zone, and the chief engineer in the play was commenting on lots of technical stuff that will improve it. Another part of the play has a nice oil zone only fifty feet above another porous zone that is full of saltw#ter. That won't work with fracs. You will just frac down into the water and the water K being greater than oil K, you will just make saltw#ter.
I have been wondering if I could post a well log on here, from surface to the Woodford source rock, just to give you guys an idea of how many zones that you would have to frac through to reach the surface. Ain't gonna happen around here.
To all of you Appalachian people: The problem with the Marcellus is that there isn't a porous and permeable saltw#ter disposal zone in the basin. So what do you do with it?
Here is how a frac works. You drill and case the well. Now they are running two surface casing liners. One down to 2000 feet in many areas. 800 grand extra, but if it will make people sleep better at night..
After the well is drilled and the rig moves off, the frac crew shows up. Now even on a moderately sized normal old vertical frac this is an impressive array of equipment, but with the shale gas fracs it is HUGE. So the number of trucks will blow your mind. That, and they have to haul incredible amounts of clean fresh water via trucks.
So you frac a well. If it is a high permeability zone that didn't need a frac to open up low permeability rock, the shut in pressure on the wellhead would be zero. It is a lot of fluid, but a good porous sandstone can hold that volume in a forty acre area.
Shales were never considered to be proper reservoir rocks in almost all cases because permeability is in the nanodarcy range. It can take a full year for a methane molecule to migrate to a fracture. The pore throats are that tiny. When you frac a low perm rock, the wellhead will have fairly high pressure on it. You open it up and it flows the water back. Eventually the gas comes in and spits out the rest of the load. Doesn't take long. Days to a month in most cases. So you get that fluid back. Now it isn't nice clean fresh water with a drag reducer. It brings back water from the shale as well, and that usually has very high chlorides. At depth in a hydrocarbon basin, every pore is filled with saltw#ter, oil, or gas. Occasionally you will hit something weird like pure nitrogen.
So that used frac fluid comes back with crazy things, depending on the area. I know that there is a barium problem in the Marcellus. If you ran spent frac water through a municipal treatment plant that discharged into a river in Oklahoma, you would probably go to jail.
I read a story about how they were using the produced saltw#ter to de-ice roads in Pennsylvania once. Stupid.
In the producing states we have very strict rules about dealing with fluids. They aren't even hard to comply with. If the EPA suddenly gets into the exploration end of the oil and gas industry, we will be screwed. The state has a hundred years of experience dealing with it, and groundwater is nigh the only thing that they are rabid about. Depth to base of treatable water is known, and you are required to follow a strict set of operational guidelines. This is no big deal. We know the cost of drilling a well first. Then we look for reserves that will at least pay back the cost of the well. At 3.50 gas, very few of the current crop of shale gas wells are paying out. If you think the companies are greedy, just go buy some stock in one of the bigger domestic independents with lots of gas reserves.
I have tried to keep this within the realm of understanding, but the general consensus now is that the battle is lost. Not through science but through public belief. Kind of like the world ending in 2012, or Obama being a muslim born in Kenya, or whatever.
There are some really scary things going on in the arctic that nobody even notices.
As for the sudden industrialization of your countryside, dude from Appalachia, I know how it is. The Arkoma was pretty much drilled up within a few years. It seemed like 75% of the traffic was tank trucks. It has been pretty much developed and things are back to normal now.
It is dealing with the transport and proper disposal of the spent frac fluid that is the environmental problem. The aesthetic problem also can't be ignored.
edit: Yes, the amount of water is a big problem in the NE. It is no big deal down here. We have been frac'ing wells for 60 years or so. I guess the cities are used to selling fresh water. They charge a good fee and make $$ from it.
The industrialized part of it will die down. It is just a boom right now. If gas was ten bucks/mcf, there would be a lot more drilling. All of the gas rich independents are kind of hanging on by their fingernails right now. Go check stock charts on DVN, CHK, XTO, Newfield, etc. A lot of those wells cost 7 to 9 million to drill. They are lucky to pay out at these prices.
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Sierra Ledge Rat
Social climber
Retired to Appalachia
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Dec 16, 2011 - 07:58am PT
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You guys just don't understand the first thing about geology, or at least petroleum geology
And you don't understand what it is like being invaded by a bunch of out-of-state mining as#@&%es who drive large trucks at very high speeds through our neigborhoods, in complete disregard for speed-limits, our safety and our well-being.
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Dec 16, 2011 - 11:07am PT
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I have indeed seen my home town overrun with all of the tanker trucks. The trucks moving rigs, moving pipe, moving you name it. It was crazy. The Arkoma was like that for five years. Absolute mania. It seemed like every other vehicle was a big red tank truck moving water around. It has slowed down, though. Most of the drilling in the sweet area of the Woodford has been done.
The only upside was that there was zero unemployment. If you had a pulse, you had a job. If you owned mineral rights, you were rich.
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Studly
Trad climber
WA
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Dec 16, 2011 - 11:09am PT
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and then your water supply became poisonous, and you were f*#ked.
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Sierra Ledge Rat
Social climber
Retired to Appalachia
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Dec 16, 2011 - 11:25am PT
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The only upside was that there was zero unemployment. If you had a pulse, you had a job. If you owned mineral rights, you were rich.
RAPE is not justfied, just because RAPE brings in jobs. We've already been through this mess with the unregulated strip mining for "clean coal."
The "old" West Virginia:
The "new" West Virginia:
IS WIDE-SPREAD PERMENENT DESTRUCTION WORTH A FEW THOUSAND JOBS?????????????????????????????
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golsen
Social climber
kennewick, wa
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 16, 2011 - 01:12pm PT
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Base,
I don't doubt your knowledge of drilling and geology.
If you ran spent frac water through a municipal treatment plant that discharged into a river in Oklahoma, you would probably go to jail.
I did however, want to clear this up. Most POTW's (Publicly Owned Treatment Works) that are large scale take in all manner of industrial chemicals so their acceptance of the fracking fluid is based upon the specific contaminants. FYI - I have seen Superfund Waste sent to POTW's (with banned pesticides) as well as wastewater generated from the destruction of nerve agents. Based upon my experience it is not inconceivable that Spent Fracing fluid could be sent to a POTW.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Dec 16, 2011 - 01:48pm PT
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You probably don't know about this, because the newspapers don't know jack Unfortunately, they don't know jack about economics, or any of a number of other subjects upon which they must report. All they know is "journalism," which is important, but not a substitute for knowledge of the subject matter. In a way, it's like someone with a degree in education, but no science background, trying to teach physics or chemistry.
Unfortunately, none of us has the technical background in every subject of public interest, and we end up relying too much on those with journalism skills rather than on those who know. Our collective decisions often end up correct, but the discussion in getting there often resembles irrational babble -- or maybe just the ST forum.
;)
John
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Big Mike
Trad climber
BC
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Dec 16, 2011 - 02:34pm PT
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Base- What happens to the water? How is it prevented from re-intergrating with clean water supplies?
A friend of a friend was telling us about a study she was doing on Lake Ontario awhile ago. The purpose was to see what pharmaceutical residues could be found in the water.
The results were rather shocking. Every known drug in the area plus a few more were present in all the samples..
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Sierra Ledge Rat
Social climber
Retired to Appalachia
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Dec 16, 2011 - 02:52pm PT
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How is it prevented from re-intergrating with clean water supplies?
You can't prevent it from contaminating the local well water.
But the fracking industry has gotten legislation pushed through that relieves the industry from liability for well water contamination.
After all, jobs are at stake!
What is surprising is that Republicans are leading the fracking industry cavalry charge. Historically Republicans have championed landowner rights. But now the Republicans are demanding that landowners forfeit their rights to their land and clean water in the name progress.
Historically Republicans have also championed local control. But now Republicans are calling for state and federal oversight to prevent local communities from regulating local fracking.
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Big Mike
Trad climber
BC
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Dec 16, 2011 - 02:56pm PT
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Wes- That is also present in most commercially farmed chicken these days as a result of farmers over using meds.
Also you flush your meds everytime you pee!
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Dec 16, 2011 - 03:00pm PT
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Also you flush your meds everytime you pee!
True, leading my friend and frequent climbing partner, Dan Smith, to comment to a friend of ours who believed in all sorts of meds and supplements -- with rather dubious benefits -- that she had the most expensive urine in town.
John
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jfailing
Trad climber
Lone Pine
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Dec 16, 2011 - 03:05pm PT
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I wonder if this fracking contamination problem is somewhat limited to the Northeast and the Marcellus... It seems that many wells are located near or on people's properties, which might mess with their drinking water more-so than say somewhere in Oklahoma.
There's plenty of fracking all over the US. Just seems that most of the water contamination complaints are coming from Pennsylvania, where lots of people live very close to fracked wells. It doesn't seem like there are many complaints in the Dakotas, where there are like 150+ drilling rigs fracking like crazy...
So does that make it safe if it's far away from civilization?
Also - Sierra Ledge Rat - consider if the trucks and machinery in your hometown were instead related with a wind-farm going up in your area... Would you still be as pissed?
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Sierra Ledge Rat
Social climber
Retired to Appalachia
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Dec 16, 2011 - 03:21pm PT
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Also - Sierra Ledge Rat - consider if the trucks and machinery in your hometown were instead related with a wind-farm going up in your area... Would you still be as pissed?
I'm not stupid. Although I would prefer a full-on push for non-fossil fuels, the reality is that I'm stuck putting gasoline into my car and heating my home with natural gas.
So I'm not opposed to coal mines or fracking or whatever -- but I am vehemently opposed to the manner in which it is curremtly being conducted.
Under GWB, there was a ruling that filling river vallies with debris from strip mines did not require an environmental impact statement. So now the mining companies are stripping off mountain tops and dumping the material into river basins. Then they abandon the strip mines without reclaiming the land, and leave it up to the state to clean up the mess using levies collected from each ton of coal. But the levies are so small that the clean-up efforts are less than 50% funded.
Now with fracking - contaminated water, trampling of landowner rights, speeding trucks - it's a mess.
We do have a few large wind farms here in WV. Apparently the largest wind farm was put up in a major bird migratory path and a major bat area. The bird and bat kills from the turbines exceed the usual kill rates associated with other wind farms by an order of magnitude.
This is what our creeks are like around here. The Cheat River is a major river that, until recently, was completely dead. Thanks to groups like the Friends of the Cheat and West Virginia Rivers Coalition, there is a lot of work being done to buffer the acid mine drainage before it reaches major waterways. Usually the buffering is done with limestone and precipitating catchment ponds. It's all being done with private funds because the state can't afford to reclaim abandoned mines.
So it's really a manner of conduct.
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