…”The technique is very common in wells for shale gas, tight gas, tight oil, and coal seam gas[1][2] and hard rock wells. This well stimulation is usually conducted once in the life of the well and greatly enhances fluid removal and well productivity, but there has been an increasing trend towards multiple hydraulic fracturing as production declines”… Hydraulic fracturing – Wikipedia,
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing
While there has been a lot of reporting about a procedure officially known as “slick water hydraulic fracturing”, aka “FRACKING”, I had not commented much on it because it seemed to me to be an issue that was disturbing to the “Environmentalist’s”, and I agreed with their concerns. Then we started hearing about the possibility of fracturing causing earthquake’s. And I could only comment that this development would be in line with the HARRP “program”, and so I say, “what else is new”.
And now, near my home in Louisiana, near the town of Lacombe, there is a proposal for a fracturing operation, and listening to the local news reports I learned something that was so shocking, and unbelievable, I am sorry I did not investigate this further when this became an issue about three years ago. Locally it was reported that Helis Oil & Gas, out of New Orleans, submitted a public hearing request late last month for its project to the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, which controls permits for this kind of work. And in that report, it was said to be a “NEW WELL“. That combined “Directional Drilling” with hydraulic fracturing. This was the first time I have ever heard of this drilling technique being used for a new well. What also was disturbing was that report said that Helis Oil & Gas was not certain of finding any oil or natural gas. Oil exploration is not done by DRILLING! Geological Surveys are conducted long before any Drilling is even considered!
I first heard about “FRACTURING” in the 1970’s while working in the Oil Fields of the Gulf of Mexico. As you may remember, that was when we first started being told about ‘fuel shortages’. But I have first hand knowledge that was caused through the manipulations of Big Oil. I was working on one of the larger “Production Platforms” (at that time) in the Gulf called ” West Delta (block) Conoco 45 C.Q.”
During one of the contrived oil shortage’s, the platform was “Shut-In” (not producing, not sending oil to shore.) I asked the production superintendent, HENRY SHORT, why we were shut-in, and with a straight face he told me that “We are producing to much”. I had just got of the phone with my mother in Ohio, and she was talking about the lines at the gas pumps.
I learned a lot about the oil field after working there for ten years. When I left, I was a certified N.D.T. Technician (Non Destructive Testing), performing X-Ray and Ultra-Sound etc. examinations of various steel components in the oil field as well as Electric Power Plants, both Conventional and Nuclear. testing welding and thickness’s for erosion, in both areas of operation.
I was able to spend a good bit of time talking to the old ‘Drillers’ and ‘Pushers’ and learned a lot about the oil field operations. When I learned about Fracturing, Directional Drilling etc. it was explained by men that knew what they were talking about from many years of on hands experience. I was told that Fracturing was developed for extracting oil and gas from “old well’s” that had stopped producing or were “under producing, and that Fracturing was an affordable procedure because of the amount of product that was still available was offset by the cost of a NEW WELL. It was never said to be used as the method for establishing a new well.
With your standard oil well, there is no need for Fracturing or Directional Drilling. Those techniques were developed for very specific applications. For example, drilling into an oil reservoir from different angles, allows for multiple “DRAW POINTS” from the same reservoir, and the same drilling rig, with out requiring the rig to be moved.
Another aspect of well drilling is the initial “bore hole”. Every hole that is drilled must be “CASED” and cemented to provide and maintain structural integrity to the bore. It prevents a collapse of the bore hole, and is a process that is repeated through out every hole, in predetermined segments or distance’s.
Also required for every drilling operation, is drilling “mud” or fluids. The MUD is a water based mud, until the well has reached the oil, and then the mud is changed to an oil based fluid. NOTE that this process is ALSO required for the drilling of these NEW (NEW) Fracture Wells,( “IF” they were to reach any oil.)
Prior to “Completion” of the oil well, a “Blow Out Preventer” (BOP) is installed… “WHY CLASS”? … BECAUSE ALL OIL WELLS ARE UNDER EXTREME PRESSURE! Just watch “The Beverly Hillbilly’s” and you will see that “BUBBLING CRUDE”! AND just think back to April 2010. Wasn’t the “Blow out preventer” blamed for the Gulf “OIL SPILL”? That is except of course, for the NEW FRACTURING WELLS. Those NEW wells will apparently NOT, for some as yet explained reason, have the need for a BOP, because, again, FOR some as yet, explained reason, those Fracturing Wells will be APPLYING EXTREME PRESSURE! They will bring in powerful compressors. They will also require additional HAZARDOUS FLUIDS, not for the Drilling process, but for the extraction of “OIL”(?).
Can anyone tell me how in the world these Fracture Wells are justified, after we consider the additional cost’s and hazards? Does any one believe that there is not enough oil, accessible through the tried and true, PROVEN SAFE methods?
WHY, IN HELL AND CREATION, has no one exposed these issues yet? Is Fracturing being done in any of the Middle Eastern Oilfields?
I talked to a “DRILLING Consultant” that I have known for 34 years, and he told me that I was correct. That the ADDITIONAL costs for materials and equipment needed for Fracturing, could not justify this procedure, Economically or Environmentally He also told me that the only offshore Fracturing operations that he knew of in the Gulf of Mexico, was off the coast of Mexico. He did not understand why. But we should know why. It is more expensive to truck those added materials and then transport them by boat to the location. That would be just one reason.
About six months after the B.P “blow out’ on April 20th 2010, there was a few advertisement campaigns that promoted the safety, and technological abilities of Oil Company’s, and one said that there had been a new discovery called “Directional Drilling”. Again, I knew about that from working in the oil fields. It was developed in 1920. Fracturing was developed in 1946, and perfected by 1949.
ALL of this seems to leave us with a very big “WHY”?
Below are LINKS, and quotes from those links.
EDOMS THORN does not do “NEWS” articles, mainly because they are only reporting the “SYMPTOMS” of the Disease that has infected the western world! The fact that I do not “NAME” them here, is not to be mistaken for “FEAR OF” that evil. AND think about this. The evil ones are always trying to fulfill Biblical Prophesy’s. Water turned to blood, (poison) and EARTHQUAKES?
This is the only Production Platform off of South Africa. It is a monster. In the center you will note what is called a “Work Over Rig” performing maintenance, safety inspections and test’s. (Pictures from GOOGLE IMAGE)
Directional drilling has been an integral part of the oil and gas industry since the 1920s.
Many prerequisites enabled this suite of technologies to become productive. Probably, the first requirement was the realization that oil wells, or water wells, are not necessarily vertical. This realization was quite slow, and did not really grasp the attention of the oil industry until the late 1920s when there were several lawsuits alleging that wells drilled from a rig on one property had crossed the boundary and were penetrating a reservoir on an adjacent property.
Wells are drilled directionally for several purposes:
Increasing the exposed section length through the reservoir by drilling through the reservoir at an angle
Drilling into the reservoir where vertical access is difficult or not possible. For instance an oilfield under a town, under a lake, or underneath a difficult-to-drill formation
Allowing more wellheads to be grouped together on one surface location can allow fewer rig moves, less surface area disturbance, and make it easier and cheaper to complete and produce the wells. For instance, on an oil platform or jacket offshore, 40 or more wells can be grouped together. The wells will fan out from the platform into the reservoir(s) below. This concept is being applied to land wells, allowing multiple subsurface locations to be reached from one pad, reducing costs.
Drilling along the underside of a reservoir-constraining fault allows multiple productive sands to be completed at the highest stratigraphic points.
Drilling a “relief well” to relieve the pressure of a well producing without restraint (a “blowout”). In this scenario, another well could be drilled starting at a safe distance away from the blowout, but intersecting the troubled wellbore. Then, heavy fluid (kill fluid) is pumped into the relief wellbore to suppress the high pressure in the original wellbore causing the blowout.
This form of drilling can also reduce the environmental cost and scarring of the landscape. Previously, long lengths of landscape where required to be removed from the surface which is no longer required with this form of drilling
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directional_drilling
Induced hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracturing, also commonly known as fracking or fraccing) is a mining technique in which a liquid (in most cases water) is mixed with sand and chemicals and the resultant mixture injected at high pressure into a wellbore. This creates small fractures in the deep rock formations, typically less than 1mm wide, along which gas, petroleum and brine may migrate to the well. Hydraulic pressure is removed from the well, then small grains of proppant (sand or aluminium oxide) hold these fractures open once the rock achieves equilibrium. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Hydraulic_fracturing#.23
The first experimental use of hydraulic fracturing was in 1947, and the first commercially successful applications were in 1949. As of 2012, 2.5 million hydraulic fracturing jobs have been performed on oil and gas wells worldwide, more than one million of them in the United States.
Mechanics
Fracturing in rocks at depth tends to be suppressed by the confining pressure, due to the immense load caused by the overlying rock strata and the cementation of the formation. This is particularly so in the case of “tensile” (Mode 1) fractures, which require the walls of the fracture to move apart, working against this confining pressure. Hydraulic fracturing occurs when the effective stress is overcome sufficiently by an increase in the pressure of fluids within the rock, such that the minimum principal stress becomes tensile and exceeds the tensile strength of the material.[13][14] Fractures formed in this way will in the main be oriented in the plane perpendicular to the minimum principal stress and for this reason induced hydraulic fractures in well bores are sometimes used to determine the orientation of stresses.[15] In natural examples, such as dikes or vein-filled fractures, the orientations can be used to infer past states of stress.[16]
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing
“As prior blog posts and reports have detailed, hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) has been occurring onshore in California for decades, yet without full disclosure to the public or state regulatory agencies. Recently, new reports of offshore fracking in both California and federal waters have surfaced, showing that fracking has also been underway off the coast for many years, including in California’s most biologically sensitive areas”.
“Yet the California Coastal Commission, which is tasked with protecting California’s marine environment, was not notified about new fracking activity within its jurisdiction, and issued no coastal development permits to allow it”.
“While California has long had a ban on new drilling offshore, this ban does not prohibit drilling from existing or “grandfathered” platforms in state waters. California’s Department of Oil, Gas & Geothermal Resources (DOGGR), which regulates oil and gas development in the state, has approved individual well drilling plans for at least four such “grandfathered” platforms and five oil and gas producing islands in state waters. And it did so apparently without communicating with the Coastal Commission about this activity. As such, the Coastal Commission never had the opportunity to assess the potential harm to coastal waters from these operations”.
“The term hydrofracking comes from a procedure officially known as slick water hydraulic fracturing. This process is used to obtain natural gases concealed below the Earth’s surface. Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” was created by Halliburton Inc., Schlumberger Inc. and Messina Inc. It was first used in the 1940s to unlock substantial amounts of oil and clean-burning natural gas, which is extracted from dense deposits of shale. This is different from conventional natural gas drilling and makes mining in dense shale economically possible”.
http://www.blogs.berkeley.edu/offshore-frackin
…”The risks presented by hydraulic fracturing include potential contamination of ground and surface waters from well casing failure”… http://legal-planet.org/2013/04/11/hydraulic-fracking-in-california-new-report-addresses-wastewater-and-potential-water-impacts/
Many Law suites have been filed because of underhand “back door” tactics that have skirted the Laws in various states. As of today 05-14-14 one was just reported in Ohio… http://legal-planet.org/2012/10/18/fracking-lawsuit-filed-in-california-against-state-agency/
Hydraulic Fracking in California: New Report Addresses Wastewater and Potential Water Impacts
edomsthorn 