Posted on 08/10/2018 8:10:25 AM PDT by Reeses
... The event I refer to is the drilling of the first well which would use hydraulic fracturing to crack shale rock, thereby releasing the gas beneath the rock. Put differently, it was 20 years ago that “fracking” was born.
... The volumes of natural gas, natural gas liquids, and crude oil that this technique has uncovered all over the country have been unfathomable, and over the last decade alone has caused the United States to more than double their crude oil production on an absolute basis, and to surpass Russia and Saudi Arabia in production on a relative basis.
... Instantly, the national energy need to import expensive natural gas completely inverted, and we now stand ready to become the leading exporter of natural gas in the world.
Thoughtful environmentalists have had to appreciate with awe and wonder what natural gas has meant to greenhouse emissions, which have been reduced nearly 15% since the fracking/shale revolution began, all the while increasing the underlying energy production many times over.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Even though the birth of fracking began in the 1860s, the birth of modern day hydraulic fracturing began in the 1940s. In 1947, Floyd Farris of Stanolind Oil and Gas began a study on the relationship between oil and gas production output, and the amount of pressurized treatment being used on each well
Thoughtful environmentalists have had to appreciate with awe and wonder what natural gas has meant to greenhouse emissions, which have been reduced nearly 15% since the fracking/shale revolution began, all the while increasing the underlying energy production many times over.
...
Thoughtful environmentalist...
Name one.
Fracking in Texas is the only thing that prevented a second Great Depression during the Obama regime.
Even though the birth of fracking began in the 1860s, the birth of modern day hydraulic fracturing began in the 1940s. In 1947, Floyd Farris of Stanolind Oil and Gas began a study on the relationship between oil and gas production output, and the amount of pressurized treatment being used on each well
...
Thanks. My recollection is that fracking has been around for a long time. I think the modern innovation is using one wellhead to replace many.
Today is also the day that the 1st Patent was awarded for the 1st Electric Guitar:-)
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-ever-electric-guitar-patent-awarded-to-the-electro-string-corporation
Modern fracking is the greenest technology of the past 20 years, and the envious greens hate it.
...
Natural gas allowed us to meet the Kyoto protocol without ever joining.
Technological innovation seems to be much better all around for the environment than more government regulation and giving politicians more money.
Fracking aquifers to enhance flow rates predates its use in the petroleum/hydrocarbon industry.
A second great depression would have made the wun prance with glee for days at a time.
Yep. Just imagine how much worse the Great Recession would have been but for Fracking. That and the Tech industry are about all that kept the country afloat though for much of the country the Great Recession was about as bad as the Great Depression.
President Trump has taken the brakes Obama applied off so we should see an even bigger boost in the future. This has also completely transformed our security situation. We already can just about meet all of our energy needs with imports only from the rest of North America. We simply do not need the Middle East or Nigeria or even Venezuela any more. Will our foreign policy adjust? Will we draw down our troops and stop paying the price to ensure the flow of oil for Europe and China.....oil that we are not dependent on? I’d say its high time that stopped. If the region goes to hell in a handbasket, its no longer our problem.
George Phydias Mitchell (May 21, 1919 – July 26, 2013) was an American businessman, real estate developer and philanthropist from Texas credited with pioneering the economic extraction of shale gas.
According to The Economist, “few businesspeople have done as much to change the world as George Mitchell.”
The rise [in shale gas] has been helped along by a variety of factors.... But the biggest difference was down to the efforts of one man: George Mitchell, ...who saw the potential for improving a known technology, fracking, to get at the gas. Big oil and gas companies were interested in shale gas but could not make the breakthrough in fracking to get the gas to flow. Mr Mitchell spent ten years and $6m to crack the problem (surely the best-spent development money in the history of gas). Everyone, he said, told him he was just wasting his time and money.
The Economist, July 2012
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_P._Mitchell
Fracking has been going on for decades. The ZEBCO (Zero Hour Bomb Co) got it’s start making torpedoes for oil wells, and Operation Gasbuggy used underground nukes to fracture the rocks. It worked well, except the gas was now radioactive.
Conservative friends in OK have been concerned with the marked increase in earthquakes since fracking increased.
I’m not a geologist nor do I play one on tv. Just wondering about this coincidence.
I have no recollection of hearing anything about fracking outside of the US.
Are there other shale formations around the world where fracking would work, or do they somehow appear only in North America?
Conventional production is drilling straight down into smaller pockets of hydrocarbons. When the oil stops pouring they send down steam and explosives to continue production. This is enhanced recovery and has been going on for most of a century.
Hydraulic fracturing is different. It extracts hydrocarbons from vast layers of dry shale. These layers are all over, often stacked above or below other layers. The driller rotates the bit to horizontal and traverses the thin layer for a mile. Then they explode the shale, pump in sand and produce. This is expensive but easily affordable given today’s prices.
Taking Oklahoma history back in the seventies we learned that there were a lot of earthquakes in Oklahoma in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The twentieth century was blessed with a lull.
Hydraulic fracturing has been going on since the 40’s. I even witnessed one the the first frac jobs as a kid near Ringwood, Ok. It was in the Mississippi Lime rather than a shale formation.
We have alway known that there were hydrocarbons in shales but vertical drilling did not give enough exposure to the borehole to make to economical, typically 50 to 100 ft.
It is horizontal drilling that made it work where now you have 5 to 10 thousand feet of shale exposure to the bore hole. So one well does what before would have taken 50 or more.
They will now say we will run out of sand for fracking just as they said we would run out of oil....
Canadian Frackmaster was fracking 40 or 50 years ago north of Calgary.
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