We’ve Been Fracking Since the 1940s?
In the last few years, various environmental groups have tried to portray hydraulic fracturing — sometimes known as “fracking” — as a new process, but in reality the process is anything but new.
According to David Bleakley of the Eastern Kansas Oil and Gas Association, hydraulic fracturing — where water is pumped down a well to rupture the oil-bearing strata hundreds or thousands of feet below the surface — has been in use since the late 1940s. The first “frack” was performed in western Kansas in 1947. What is relatively new is the combining of horizontal drilling techniques and fracking, but even this process has been used for more than a decade.
Fracking has become a convenient club, not just in major oil-producing states such as Oklahoma and Texas, but also in minor production states like Kansas. Bleakley claims that whether it’s environmentalists, people who favor another industry, or the landowners, it’s become a strategy to use fracking as an excuse. Bleakley believes part of the problem is that people opposed to fracking in particular and oil and gas exploration in general do not generally clarify all their connections.
Joe Spease, a high-ranking member of the Kansas Sierra Club, is also president and CEO of WindSoHy, a firm specializing in so-called renewable energy. He has a vested interest in restricting the production of more traditional forms of energy. On March 5 of this year, Spease debated Ed Cross of the Kansas Independent Oil and Gas Association without revealing his ties to the renewables industry. Says Bleakley:
You know exactly what Ed Cross is. (But in the case of Spease) you’re not only (the fracking committee chairman) of the Sierra Club but you’re president of a wind industry company. Let’s have transparency about the people in the debate.
Bleakley says the motives of many of the environmental groups which go after the oil and gas companies are simply monetary: they file lawsuits ostensibly to “protect the environment,” but are happy to settle:
If you’re an environmental attorney this is great. You finally wear down the companies — “I know this is extortion, but what do I have to pay to have you go away?”
One legitimate concern is the water used to make the fracks. About 99 percent is salt water, and the rest is a series of chemicals — mostly surfactants which make water “slicker” — but the exact composition is usually proprietary information unique to each company. That water is highly toxic and is pumped back down secondary wells called “injection wells,” anywhere from two to four miles underground.
According to Bleakley, concerns about contamination of groundwater, such as the Ogallala Aquifer, are overblown. He says the water table is almost invariably hundreds or thousands of feet above the area where oil is found, and concrete “well casings” are required to surround the well from the surface to below the water table. Indeed, the first frack in Kansas in 1947 was done through the Ogallala.
Another tactic by the environmental left has been to raise the specter of earthquakes caused by the process. While there is some evidence the injection wells where the toxic wastewater from fracking is pumped back into the ground can cause minor earthquakes, there is controversy over whether or not this is actually the case. Groups like the Sierra Club have suggested such quakes could damage nuclear power plants and cause a Fukushima-type disaster. Indeed, Spease suggests that would be the case with the Wolf Creek plant in Burlington, KS, as a story by a Kansas City-area TV station suggested earlier this year:
Oklahoma geologist and man-made earthquake expert, Austin Holland, took a more measured stance.
“We have known for a long time that deep injection can cause earthquakes,” Holland said. “And there are some good classic examples, and some more recent examples of injection wells triggering earthquakes.”
Among those recent examples is a 4.0 magnitude quake in Youngstown, OH, as well as a 5.3 tremor in southern Colorado and a 5.6 event outside of Prague, OK.
Spease was one of the people making dire predictions if fracking continues near the plant:
“This would be a disaster like we have not seen in this country,” Spease warned.
Apparently, the geologist didn’t agree:
“I don’t believe there is an inherent risk, at that sort of magnitude,” Holland said. “That’s kind of alarmist.”
Wolf Creek spokeswoman Jenny Hageman backed up Holland’s assessment, telling KCTV5:
We are built to safely shutdown and to maintain the reactor in a safe condition in the event of a significant earthquake, especially for our area.
Hageman said the nuclear plant was built to handle a quake in the neighborhood of 7.0 on the Richter scale, a number greater than any tremor ever felt in Kansas history.
Bleakley agrees, saying this is all about shutting down an essential industry:
You get fearmongering among people. They don’t listen to the facts, or they don’t like the facts, or they don’t like certain industries.
Moreover, according to Bleakley, fracking is essential to production worldwide, particularly as it becomes more difficult to get to new reserves: “If you weren’t able to frack, you wouldn’t have near the production; we’d have a severe oil crunch.”
Bleakley says much of the controversy is politically motivated as well, noting the oil industry in general and fracking in particular have been heavily regulated for decades. Many states, Kansas included, have more stringent regulations than the EPA:
You could probably track concern about fracking by the changes in administration.
Hydraulic Fracturing of Oil & Gas Wells Drilled in Shale. Hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have turned unproductive shales into the largest natural gas fields in the World.
What is Hydraulic Fracturing?
http://geology.com/articles/hydraulic-fracturing/
Thanks for the link Washington……miss you bro! Hope all is well your end…..
Thank you, Leauxryda! Ditto’s!
“Groups like the Sierra Club have suggested such quakes could damage nuclear power plants and cause a Fukushima-type disaster.”
That would be impressive, since it was a tsunami that did the damage.
Imagine the size of that wave! It’d be a bad day in the rest of the USA for it to reach Kansas.
What do you think Whyat was using to extract oil from shale in Atlas Shrugged?
I hope we do not see his Torch.
Would love to know how many so-called “environmentalists” are driving Chevy Volts? They’re hypocrites. And man are they good at it.
Oh, goodie.
Can’t wait to see some heads explode when I alert them to this article.
Wow. Fracking has been going on since 1947. And yet, there has been no environmental disaster related to fracking since 1947. Nearly 65 years of fracking without an environmental mishap.
There might be a lesson here for people worried about the environmental effects of fracking. Wonder what it could be?
One wonders … *dry grin*
The enviro-whackos have gone toe to toe with business in America for as long as I can remember. I’ve come to understand this fight isn’t about the environment – its about control. The useful idiots like to think they’re saving the planet – they ain’t! They ain’t even saving themselves.
40 years ago I could understand the need for cleaner water and air. I remember when the Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught fire in 1969 – and not for the first time! As alarming as that news was it brought even worse news – although the extent and impact of that ‘news’ wouldn’t be understood for another 40 or so years. It helped give birth to the EPA a year later. The problem is 40 years later this same EPA has been turned into a tool of the left – turning the screws on oil and chemical production and private citizen alike. The problem today is the gains made are minuscule in comparison to those of 40 years ago but the costs are exponentially greater for those minuscule gains. At some point in the process costs must be weighed against the gains. The EPA has the coal industry on the ropes and all indications are they’ll soon have the auto industry there too if Zero gets another 4 year term. We can ill afford him and his storm troopers and their monkey wrenches binding up the gears of business and industry.
“40 years ago I could understand the need for cleaner water and air.”
That relates to environment as much as weather relates to climate. Maybe less.
Environmentalists are just the modern day Luddites;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
They are called swampies because they want the earth to return to it’s primal state. Not for them, of course but for the rest of us. Go to a Sierra Club meeting and count the SUV’s in the parking lot.
Celer, Silens, Mortalis.
Watermelons, Green on the outside, RED on the inside. People lusting for power and control who should have neither.
I have always wondered about that because I remember from quite a few years ago Eddie Chiles as in Mad Eddie,
“whatcha mad about to day Eddie?” “I’m mad, I’m mad at the liberals in congress, its about time they … .” Brought to you by The Western Company specializin’ in acidizin’, fracturin’ and off shore drillin’. Eddie Chiles president and CEO.
I was working for an oilwell service company in the 1940′s, spent most of my working life in the Patch. I participated in a job in what was then “brand new technology” and an experiment by a Major. We mixed a sand and diesel slurry in the “tub” we ordinarly used to mix the cement in, and pumped it downhole into the formation. It has come a long way from those days, and I cannot tell you how many Frac jobs I participated in before I retired, and never saw an earthquake. Glad that someone (#9 – chuck) remembered Eddie Chiles, I worked for him till he went under, a fine man, and a died in the wool Conservative, and he did his himself.
While the article is basically true, that fracking has been used for decades, wells are not drilled “hundreds of thousands of feet deep.” Thousands of feet, yes, but not hundreds of thousands. A really deep well in the ’50s might have been 5000 ft. Now they drill deeper, but not, I think, by even an order of magnitude, much less two orders of magnitude.
And wells that are drilled horizontally might be somewhat longer than the deepest well, but not even they extend hundreds of thousands of feet. Someone out there must know, but I doubt the horizontal portion is more than a couple of thousand feet long.
Libs seem to get away with extravagant claims, but we conservatives generally try to get the facts right.
Hundreds OR thousands
need to put your glasses on mike
“hundreds OR thousands”
The deepest onshore wells that I have heard of were drilled in Pecos County, Texas and were to a depth near 25,000 feet. There may be deeper wells now, but not much deeper than that. Most shale layer gas wells have been drilled between 4000 and 10000 foot depths. Most water aquifers are between 50 and 500 foot depths. The Sierra Club and all of their splinter groups wants to stop fracking because, as long as it is allowed, heavy subsidized solar and wind energy farms will not be needed for at least one hundred years. That could put a big dent in the amount of taxpayer’s money these half baked industries will be able to collect. You always have to follow the money with the official religion of the United States Government, Environmentalism. Say, isn’t the government prohibited from designating an official religion for the United States? Believe me, the Green Energy nuts won’t be just giving up on the gravy train that has supported all of their activities over the last twenty or so years. ABO2012
@Mike; you are correct, it is not hundreds of thousands of feet, during my career of 40+ years working in the patch I’ve been on hundreds of “frack” jobs and the deepest wells I’ve seen were on the order of 19,000-20,000 feet, but that was not typical.
The horizontal drilling technique reduces the need for multiple vertical wells to produce a given area. For example, some states limit the number of wells per section, (640 acres = 1 section = 1 square mile), thus 1 vertical hole with several laterals branching out about 2,500 feet horizontally can effectively produce oil and gas from the entire section.
After forty years of engineering, a score of nukes, and two score of fossil fueled power plants, incalculable numbers of licensing meetings, I have induced several rules of thumb. Scientists lie. Lawyers lie. Pure hearted “isms” lie. Everybody makes mistakes. And there is always risk, particularly in anything which deals with Mother Nature. The reason is simple; we “know” things are made of atoms, but our knowledge of what is down five miles beneath our feet in incomplete. And recently we have learned that actually the atoms are really strings, of which we know even less. From this reality, some folks grab power and money by terrorizing ignorant people, the ones who skipped math and science class. Any time you read a technical “expert” article which includes “might cause an earthquake, destroy a nuke and kill us all…” click to another website, or cartoon. He/she is either lying or is ignorant, you will never know.
Know that there are stresses in the rock down there. These stresses made mountain ranges and ocean basins. If there are little earthquakes, that is good. The stresses have revived themselves, probably for centuries. Any quake less than a five is good, even if you have to fix some cracks in your house. The walls in a nuke are perhaps a million times stronger than your walls, so not to worry. Frack, build nukes, be happy.
The danger from fracking is the same danger that caused the BP well blow out, bad sealant “mud”, a simple name for a complex cementious material. It must be placed (a tough job) and allowed to hardened ( a tricky timing problem) so as to hold a seal. This very hard work must be done by smart talented people, who must have good equipment and time to do their job. Pay them. Not the CEOs. Not the regulators. Not the lawyers. Not the Admirals, Congressmen, or naked actresses who have an opinion. And certainly not the “isms” who want to take your money. These are the problems in our society; fracking is not the problem.
I have never worked in the hydrocarbon extraction technologies, but once played the expert is a cocktail party.
That would make a good bumper sticker, R.L.
The average well in the Wattenburg field is 7000 feet vertical and 4000 feet horizontal. The Wattenburg is a very dense field (up to 4 times as dense as the Bakken field). So no 100k bore length is not average in most fields. But 10,000 foot laterals are done regularly in the Bakken when using multiple leach hole horizontals. The technology can do very long strings if and it is a big if the payback is there in a short enough time cycle to give the driller a sure ROI.
At 200 dollars per bbl you would see drillers going major distances to fulfill such a demand.
There are excellent replies here. Some disconnected comments and questions. Years ago, in consultation with the DoD, I noted the great break through was both sensing and computation down hole, smart machines which can sense and seek a target, while interacting with base controllers. This has obvious dual use characteristics. In the air, they are called drones.
This contribution nails the essence, cost vs technology. As capability, and certainty of recovery increase, the disturbance to the environment, should, if done well, decrease, not increase. For generations, the US has subsidized farmers against the vicissitudes of weather on crops. Would it be wise to smooth out the risk/reward swings for under capitalized hydrocarbon drillers? Example in the Alaskan ANWR? What is the market value of setting a drill rig 10,000 feet away from a caribou trail? 20,000 feet away? Who pays and who decides? Perhaps what America needs is an environmental subsidy to drill ANWR, a novel if infuriating concept for Senator Boxer.
And what are leach hole horizontals? Experts have a way of leaving us dummies far behind.
Leach hole pipe is a term that refers to the gathering end of the horizontal string which is placed in the bearing layer. If the earth is a layer cake and the frosting is the oil then the horizontal pipe going through the frosting will benefit from having multiple collection holes so as to enhance the production capabilities of the well. It is more often seen in condensate liquid extraction of natural gas wells but with fracking and heating it is used for shale oil extraction. Some companies are going away from water based fracking liquids, using high density LP liquids pumped down bore to extract oil. The up side to the use is one of less toxicity and the ability to recover some or most of the fracking liquids as they come back up the pipe.
And I am by no means an expert on the engineering of fracking. But I do not spend or invest in things I don’t understand. So I research and talk to the Petroleum engineers. And I have a son in the fields working for a Research and development firm. Smart kid. Not sure how he came from my genes though, Dad is no where near as smart.
Study: North Dakota oil output may jump threefold by 2025
http://bismarcktribune.com/bakken/study-north-dakota-oil-output-may-jump-threefold-by/article_703e3ea4-d66e-11e1-8746-001a4bcf887a.html
I’m no expert but geologists have screwed up before. I also doubt that the geology in Kansas is different than it is in Pennsylvannia. Fracking has been going on in Pennsylvannia and things are all screwed up. I heard from a co-worker that owns land in the area of the fracking. supposedly this fracking was allowed to go forward without EPA interference.
I apologize in advance for not having any back-up and only being able to provide hearsay but, I don’t think he’s making it up.
He doesn’t have to be making it up to be wrong.
There are other options, like “misled”, “honestly mistaken”, “stupid”, and others.
So, just because he’s THERE, doesn’t automatically mean he understands the situation.
oops, Meant say that “I doubt the geology in Kansas is the same as Pennsylvannia”
Relax, macko. Geologists knew that before you were born. They also know that, while palaeontology varies from location to location, rocks can be nearly the same in their physical properties even in vastly different locations. Geophysicists and petroleum engineers were working on the solutions to your fears a long time ago. It is the Gang Green that has shown up only recently. ABO2012
i don’t think fracking is right or good. we don’t leave this earth to our children , we borrow it from them .
Do you have some reason beyond “I don’t like it?” Some scientific reason? You greens are supposed to be big on science.
Was that your first discourse on the subject of fracking wells? I say that Barack Obama is neither right nor good. He is not leaving this earth to our children, he is borrowing from them. So, what say you, papertowl?
Excellent post.!
The road to communism needs the environmental movement to begin the destruction of capitalism. They have done a stellar job and opposing fracking is just one more move to kill capitalism in the name of saving this or that while subtly installing socialism. At first it was incrementalism but with the Dear Leader in charge its full speed ahead.
As a nuclear engineer, I’ve been the enemy to the greenies all my career.
These people have a not-so-hidden agenda – and it ain’t the topic at hand, it is the destruction of Western, industrial civilization.
They don’t care about the facts, they don’t care of the truth, just their agenda.
They only know (or care about) is manipulation.
Fracking is not good for the nuclear business, just as it is not good for the wind business. Tough noogies, it is good for the country. Do it, but do it safely and cleanly.
Thank you.
Please annoy one for me at your earliest opportunity.