Posts Tagged ‘fracking’
A pause in Ohio’s gas boom as Chesapeake struggles
>> Cleveland Plain Dealer
In at least one Ohio county, prospectors are waiting to see whether Chesapeake Energy, lord of the local gas fields, survives a crisis now playing out daily in the nation’s financial press.
Oil, gas, and rock bands
A word of advice to rock bands touring through fracking country: you might want to line up accommodations ahead of time.
An interesting, energy-related footnote emerged Wednesday in an already strange story out of Ohio.
Indie rock band Here We Go Magic was pulling onto a highway in eastern Ohio when they passed a hitchhiker who was standing alongside the on-ramp.
They turned around and went back after their sound man recognized the hitchhiker as filmmaker John Waters.
We found John Waters hitchhiking on the side of the 70 fwy, he bought us lunch. What a guy! @herewegomagic @turnerjen twitter.com/avtark/status/…
— Avtar K (@avtark) May 16, 2012
What was the band doing in Ohio anyway? Guitarist Michael Bloch explained to the DCist blog:
“There’s a hydro-fracking boom in western Pennsylvania. You can’t get a motel room. We had to drive til 4AM, and finally found a Days Inn in eastern Ohio. Getting back on the highway this morning, there was a man at the side of the on-ramp with a sign that read ‘to the end of Rte 70.’ Jen wanted to pick him up, but we drove past him. As we passed by, our sound guy said ‘John Waters’ Luke said, ‘Yep, definitely John Waters.’ We got off at the next exit and circled back. He was still there. We pulled up, opened the door and asked where he was coming from. ‘Baltimore,’ he said. And we said ‘Get in, sir.’ “
The lesson: before you bring the rock to an oil-and-gas party, make sure you have a place to stay, or you might spend an uncomfortable night in the van.
That, and keep an eye out for hitchhikers.
Ohio fracking disclosure bill could harm wind industry
>> Cleveland Plain Dealer
The public would have a better idea of what chemicals shale gas well developers are using, under legislation approved by the Ohio Senate Tuesday. But the state stands to lose $2 billion in new wind farm development because of that same bill.
Waterless fracking technique makes its debut in Ohio
A GasFrac operation in Alberta (PR photo)
Some 8,000 feet deep and 450 million years old, the Utica Shale has a lot of petroleum — crude oil, natural gas and byproducts like ethane.
Although no one really knows how much there is, oil and gas companies are flocking to eastern Ohio, home to some of the shale’s most amenable portions.
“Right now we’re still in an exploratory phase,” said Brian Hickman, a spokesperson for the Ohio Oil and Gas Association.
It’s also an experimental phase for the technology that makes shale extraction possible, Hickman said. Companies that have used horizontal hydraulic fracturing successfully in the Marcellus, Barnett and other shales are still trying to figure out how to best use it in the Utica.
In Ohio, 65 Utica Shale wells have been drilled so far, each requiring 5 to 6 million gallons of water, said Heidi Hetzel-Evans, a spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
But as Utica drillers analyze early results, at least one company thinks water might be unnecessary — or even a hindrance — and that using a waterless, propane-based form of fracking called LPG might be more efficient and profitable.
That currently unnamed company has asked GasFrac Energy Services to frack two Utica trial wells in Ohio using LPG, short for liquid petroleum gas. Founded in 2006 and based in Calgary, GasFrac is apparently the world’s only provider of LPG fracking and has used it about 1,200 times, mostly in western Canada and also in Texas and Colorado.
LPG uses a mixture of propane (and occasionally some butane) that’s pressurized to the consistency of a gel. Then, like water-based fracking, it’s injected through pipes at high pressure underground to release oil and gas by cracking open rocks using sand (or another proppant).
Unlike water, though, LPG naturally mixes with petroleum, so it returns to the surface with the oil or gas being extracted. And since LPG is electrically neutral and lacks much friction, it doesn’t dissolve any salts, heavy metals or radioactive compounds — compared to water, in which these things return to the surface and make a typically toxic mixture even more so.
Fracking, of course, is enormously controversial, mostly because of concerns of potential risks to water supplies. LPG fracking eliminates an entire wastestream — the copious amounts of toxic “flowback” water that has to be reused, treated and discharged into waterways, or disposed of in deep injection wells, which have been linked to earthquakes in Ohio.
But why would companies using hydro-fracking — which has proven to be pretty profitable — be interested in using a niche technology like LPG?
“I think the results they’re getting [in the Utica] are sub-par, and they’re looking for an alternative,” said Kyle Ward, GasFrac’s spokesperson.
GasFrac argues that LPG, compared to hydro-fracking, is both more environmentally sustainable and economically efficient in the the long run — a claim that has drawn some skepticism.
Terry Engelder, the Penn State University geologist who’s been dubbed the “Godfather” of the Marcellus Shale for his calculations of the rock layer’s natural gas potential, says water is the “mechanically most efficient fluid for breaking apart rock.”
Anthony Ingraffea, a Cornell University engineer who spent 20 years researching fracking for Schlumberger, one of the largest fracking companies, said: “I’ll give [GasFrac] credit that geochemically, it’s much better to use a hydrocarbon [propane and butane] to stimulate a reservoir…But I’m not sure how well this technique will work in a high volume long lateral shale formation [like the Utica or Marcellus shales] because they haven’t released proprietary data. That’s still unknown.”
Petroleum engineers in the 1960s and 1970s tried using propane fracking, but the potential for explosion — which is still a risk today, if better managed — left the technology uneconomical.
Last year, the petroleum giant Chevron used LPG to frack several natural gas wells in the Piceance Basin, home to several lucrative coal, oil and natural gas deposits in Colorado. The company’s annual report, while not mentioning GasFrac, noted that LPG “significantly increases production while minimizing water usage.”
The company BlackBrush recently announced a two-year contract with GasFrac in Texas’ oil-rich Eagle Ford Shale.
Offering an explanation for the dearth of public data on GasFrac’s work for other companies, Robert Lestz, the company’s chief tech officer, said, “Because our results our so superior to what people have done before, they’re not interested in sharing those results.”
In Ohio, GasFrac’s spokesman said the company hopes to start the Utica wells by the end of the month.
It could be a proving ground for the technology. “It’s no secret we’re going to the Utica,” Zeke Zeringue, GasFrac’s CEO, said in a May conference call. “Obviously we hope that leads to an establishment of some sort of base of operations.”
While GasFrac has been keen to note in its recent marketing efforts that LPG uses no water, the technology’s profitability will ultimately determine its potential, said Michael Mazar, a financial analyst who follows the company for BMO Capital Markets.
“The environmental benefits are secondary.”
CORRECTION: Because of an editor’s error, Robert Lestz was incorrectly identified as GasFrac’s founder in an earlier version of this story.
Portions of this story were originally reported for InsideClimateNews.
Anthony Brino is a Springfield, Illinois-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in The Allegheny Front, InsideClimate News and Illinois Statehouse News.
EPA: Water safe in town made famous for fracking
>> Reuters
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said drinking water is safe to consume in a small Pennsylvania town that has attracted national attention after residents complained about hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for natural gas.
Editorial: Make fracking safer
>> New York Times
Oil and gas drilling will always be a risky business. The administration cannot let pass this opportunity to make it safer.
Ohio to triple number of oil and gas field inspectors
>> Cleveland Plain Dealer
State regulators are scrambling to keep up with Ohio’s latest energy push. They inspected 18 percent of the state’s 64,481 operating wells in 2011, leaving more than 50,000 wells unchecked.
Editorial: Drill everywhere? Not so fast, legislators
>> Detroit Free Press
You think residents of high-end lakeside homes in Oakland County got a shock when they learned drilling rights in their neighborhood were going on the auction block? Well, stay tuned: It’s a shock that could arise almost anywhere in Michigan if a group of state lawmakers has its way.
Draft federal fracking rules only cover a small number of operations
>> ProPublica
Although widely understood as “national” guidelines, the draft rules would in fact only apply to to mineral rights managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
Aerial photos show scale of frac sand mines
As you’re probably aware by now, Minnesota and Wisconsin are the source of much of the silica sand used in fracking operations throughout the U.S. The expansion of sand-mining operations has understandably let to considerable public debate, as well as moratoriums on mining operations in some communities.
Jim Tittle, a St. Paul filmmaker, is working on a documentary, “The Price of Sand,” which explores the impact of these mining operations on the residents who live near them. Recently, Tittle shared some aerial photos of sand mines in Wisconsin (posted here with his permission) that he shot as part of the project.
Below, the Chippewa Sands mine in Chippewa County, which was the subject of this report from American Public Media’s Marketplace program:
A processing plant near Chippewa Falls owned by EOG (formerly Enron), documented in this USA Today article:
The Fairmount mine near Maiden Rock, which is currently seeking a permit to expand from 789 to nearly 1,700 acres:
The Preferred Sands mine in Chippewa County:
And the Superior Silica Sands mine, also in Chippewa County:
Opponents say the expanded mining operations contribute to increased noise and road damage from increased truck traffic, and have raised health concerns about dust blowing from open-air sand piles.
Tittle said his interest in sand mining was sparked when an oil company bought land near his mother’s house outside Red Wing, Minnesota.
“I grew up playing on those bluffs,” he said.
Tittle’s film is scheduled to be completed this summer. He has interview clips and other footage posted on his YouTube page.
UPDATE: On our Facebook page, John Wawrzyniak comments: “You have sand and gravel pits all over the country. What’s the issue? They make awesome shooting ranges and trails for motor cross.”
That’s a fair point, and in these communities, sand and gravel pits have long operated without much controversy. What’s changed is the vastly increased scale and intensity of the operations – that’s what is stymieing local officials and stirring up opposition from neighbors. This video goes into more detail on this point:
