Posted on 03/09/2011 10:41:38 AM PST by thackney
The surge in natural gas production via shale developments and massive liquefied natural gas projects continues to change the dynamics of the global energy industry, according to a report released this morning by IHS-CERA and the World Economic Forum.
Energy Vision 2011: A New Era for Gas, affirms what many in the energy industry have been saying for a while now — new gas drilling technologies and numerous LNG export projects coming on line are making natural gas a more abundant and attractively priced hydrocarbon.
Natural gas provides about 24 percent of all global energy needs, but the refinement of drilling technologies — namely hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling — has nearly doubled the estimates for world gas reserves by making unconventional sources more accessible.
“Natural gas, proudly labelled ‘the Prince of Hydrocarbons,’ may be about to inherit its kingdom,” says Simon Blakey, Belgium’s special envoy to the Eurogas consortium in a piece included in the CERA/WEF report. “Gas is likely to be the main means of reducing the carbon footprint of mankind’s energy use in the coming years.”
In North America, shale gale has made the continent much less reliant on LNG than was expected just a few years ago, the report notes, slowing the anticipated development of a global gas market via LNG.
“Shale has essentially made the U.S. an island market,” said Samantha Gross, director of integrated research with IHS-CERA and an author of the report.
The success of shale gas drilling and its potential be exported to other regions is also changing the dynamics of long established relationships between supply and demand, particularly in Europe.
The abundance of natural gas has the potential to help Europe meet many of its greenhouse gas reduction goals through switching from coal-fired plants to natural gas fired, the report notes.
But the switch to natural gas won’t be a quick one, the report says.
Europe may not be so eager to switch to gas as a power source because the mandates there tend to be for zero emission sources, not simply reduced emissions.
“The primary uses for gas are expected to remain the same — space and water heating in residential and commercial applications, fuel and feedstock for industrial applications and power generation,” the report says. “In OECD countries with mature gas distribution networks, the most robust growth is expected to come from power generation.”
The report does address the backlash that is being seen in a number of U.S. markets to the potential environmental threats from natural gas drilling. It largely concludes the risks can be managed by industry and aren’t all that different from earlier generations of oil and gas development.
“Some of [the backlash] has been due to not very good ground work by some of these companies in developing a relationship and trust with the local communities,” Gross said. “One would hope that companies move forward having learned from the experience and be more engaged in working in Europe.”
Pawzel Konzal, the head of the World Economic Forum’s Oil & Gas Industry group, notes that the outlook on shale gas is very different in ‘Old Europe’ versus the newer members of the European Union. Countries like Poland are more likely to see shale gas production first as a new means of energy security.
In a letter included in the report, Wojciech Jasinski, the chairman of the Polish Parliament’s Economic Committee, notes that LNG shipments and the development of domestic shale gas resources would help diversify beyond a 60 percent reliance of coal and lignite and ties to a single gas supply — the Siberian gas fields.
Hydraulic fraccing is done at such a tremendous depth below ground that the fraccing itself is no threat to groundwater. There are thousands of feet of rock between the fracced rock and any aquifers, which are at a much shallower depth. There’s no way any of the frac fluid can possibly migrate through that much rock. The only way groundwater can be contaminated by fraccing is if the gas well isn’t constructed properly and frac fluid leaks out of the well, or the frac waste water is dumped illegally above an aquifer. But that’s the same issue we have with any kind of industrial waste water. The waste water has to be disposed of properly and if it’s just dumped somewhere than can contaminate soil or groundwater.
So fraccing is like many other industrial processes that has to be done with the right equipment and engineering methods, and produces waste that has to be disposed of properly. There’s nothing really new going on except that fraccing has moved into environmentalist territory in Pennsylvania and New York. This kind of scientifically complex subject can easily to distorted or simply misunderstood by journalists and environmentalists, and then there are the greedy people who distort the facts or even manufacture evidence because want to sue oil companies for profit.
That's a short list of all the compounds found in drinking water. The important data is the PPM of each compound on your list found in the test sample and where and when were the test samples taken.
The enviro's, in order to scare folks, list everything ever found in water, even if that compound isn't found within 500 miles of where you might live.
I have no doubt that overall the pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers used by farmers and growers and sprayed right onto food we eat are much more of a hazard to humans than hydraulic fraccing. But pesticides and herbicides are much more familiar substances and therefore less threatening to environmentalists than the new, largely imaginary threat of fraccing. There’s also the political motive to attack fraccing because it’s used mainly in the conservative oil-producing states to produce products that wacko environmentalists believe will cause “global warming.”
The main environmental threat from fraccing is illegal dumping of waste water, so I would say regulators need to focus on proper disposal of waste water and make sure all the waste water is accounted for and isn’t disappearing somewhere late at night.
That statement isn't true. They may not publish them in the local paper, but every drill site using them has the MSDS sheets available on site to all the chemicals used.
So the fluid formula is in the MSDS sheets but not in the papers. So it is not proprietary info? Who gets to see the MSDS sheets?
As with any drilling if the operator used substandard equipment or procedures there is always a risk of losing integrity of the drill string. This is not just a frac problem but a drilling industry wide issue that has been address since the 1950's by the industry. There is no way that a properly maintained well string fracing a formation that is 5000+ feet deep can reach communication with an aquifer that is 200-800 feet deep. It is just not geologically possible to propagate induced fractures that far the max induced fracture distance is on the order of 10's meters almost never into the hundreds let alone the kilometers that would be needed to cross that much strata sorry just wont happen.
Gasland is propaganda by the econazi's pure and simple. Natural Gas has been associated with ground water in a number of places that happens naturally. The TRC just threw out 2 cases where N-gas was found in shallow drinking wells near a drilling site because after isotopic analysts of the gas present it was determined what every one knew all along that the gas in the water was shallow, young, and local coming from a naturally occurring seepage from an organic shale layer just below the aquifer not from 5000+ feet deep. These types of local seepage are well known, having been documented since the 1920's much much older than frac technology. The gas operators set samples of Their deep shale gas and the gas from the drinking wells to a interdependent mass spectrometer. Which proved without a shadow of a doubt that the fracing released gas was not the same as the shallow well water associated gas.
Yes as a matter of fact I am a Geoscientist :)
Haliburton has begun publishing them online for everyone. They are one of the largest suppliers of the fuilds.
“There has never been a single case of a an aquifer being contaminated by a frac job...The only known contamination is a couple of wells near a drill site...”
Are you saying the wells were contaminated, but the aquifer was not?
“There is no way that a properly maintained well string fracing a formation that is 5000+ feet deep can reach communication with an aquifer that is 200-800 feet deep. It is just not geologically possible to propagate induced fractures that far...”
Can naturally occurring fractures or other geological feautes allow such communication? Is every site so similar?
I have never seen Gasland.
Pennsylvania WaterFrac Formulation
http://www.halliburton.com/public/projects/pubsdata/Hydraulic_Fracturing/disclosures/Pennsylvania_WaterFrac_Formulation.html
That would mean the gas wasn't contained in that field in the first place.
As with any drilling if the operator used substandard equipment or procedures there is always a risk of losing integrity of the drill string. This is not just a frac problem but a drilling industry wide issue that has been address since the 1950's by the industry. There is no way that a properly maintained well string fracing a formation that is 5000+ feet deep can reach communication with an aquifer that is 200-800 feet deep. It is just not geologically possible to propagate induced fractures that far the max induced fracture distance is on the order of 10's meters almost never into the hundreds let alone the kilometers that would be needed to cross that much strata sorry just wont happen.
Gasland is propaganda by the econazi's pure and simple. Natural Gas has been associated with ground water in a number of places that happens naturally. The TRC just threw out 2 cases where N-gas was found in shallow drinking wells near a drilling site because after isotopic analysts of the gas present it was determined what every one knew all along that the gas in the water was shallow, young, and local coming from a naturally occurring seepage from an organic shale layer just below the aquifer not from 5000+ feet deep. These types of local seepage are well known, having been documented since the 1920's much much older than frac technology. The gas operators set samples of Their deep shale gas and the gas from the drinking wells to a interdependent mass spectrometer. Which proved without a shadow of a doubt that the fracing released gas was not the same as the shallow well water associated gas.
As for half recovery that's because half the fluid remains in the formation it was injected in. The reason the gas is there in the first place is the formation has a caprock over it that is not only watertight but has to be gas tight too or the gas would have dissipated away eons ago. The frac fluid that is recovered is cleaned and as required by federal law disposed of in deep saline injection wells below the caprocks of the shale formation. where like the saline waters that have been there for 10,000 to hundreds of thousands of years they are trapped in the rock pores. this is easily verifiable again with isotopic data specifically the O16 to O18 ratios which will tell you how long the formation has been capped and out of communication with the biosphere for. Putting the saline frac waters in an already deep isolated saline sandstone is common practice, in the industry. Those waters will be entombed there for all of man's existance. Think in geologic time not human time. 10,000 years is not even a blink in geologic time if those waters have been stable for that long they will far outlast humankind.
There are companies now making edible yes edible fracing fluids that use algae and seaweed surfactants and gelling agents. Those fluids should put an end to the chicken little people since even if a well operator broke the law and lost integrity and then even when his instruments are telling him that he has lost well integrity kept fracing the leakage would biodegrade and in is drinkable from the start.
The pressure curves would clearly indicate a lose of well seal, as would down bore flow meters and as a third glaring signal the micro seismic events from the fracturing would diminish and there would be clear seismic signals shallow at the site of the lose of integrity. Believe me a well operator would see his instruments screaming at him that he lost his well strings sealing. The new fluids would prevent even this crook from damaging shallow water stratas. Yes as a matter of fact I am a Geoscientist :)
sorry for the double post my computers wifi locked up, the term aquifer is thrown around a lot but in reality any water bearing formation is technically an aquifer, be it unconfined and having a subareal extent of a few square miles or confined having a extent of hundreds of square miles. At these two sites the local water bearing strata was contaminated because of willful operator error. Its not like dumping oil in a river where the flow takes the contamination over hundreds of miles. Most water moved very slowly underground the Darcy equation defining this movement its a nasty double partial derivative. People where aquifer and think omg they contaminated the whole states water supply no these 2 well operators contaminated someone's shallow back yard well. not a muni supply. that and they were grossly negligent and rightfully should pay the local land owners compensation. The overwhelming majority of drillers 99.9+% follow the laws and complete the well strings per code with ZERO up string contamination.
“That would mean the gas wasn’t contained in that field in the first place.”
And also that the fracking fluid would not be contained.
Is every fracking operation productive? Or do some of them fail to find natural gas?
if there was fracture the gas wouldn't be there. over geological time even the smallest communication from the source rocks through the caprocks would have the gas leak out. There is some debate over jointing in the strata layers but shales, sandstones and lime/dolomitic carbonates are bedded these joints do not propagate well normal to the plane of bedding they tend to follow the axis of weakness which would be horizontal not vertical. Even giving regional faulting such as the Barnett shows you cannot push enough fluids down a well string to open a existing joint or fault 1000 of feet up dip. Drillers avoid these faults as there is no much gas to be had near them. Faults = gas has leaked out already.
It means there would not have been a gas field there so there would not be any fracking operation.
Is every fracking operation productive? Or do some of them fail to find natural gas?
Hydraulic Fracturing is not exploration. It is done only after a gas source is found and needs additional porosity in the rock to get economic flow rates.
So in simple terms, first you do seismic to determine likely locations of oil/gas. Then you exploratory drill to confirm the location and quantity of sufficient gas/oil. Then you fracture the rock if additional flow is required.
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