Fracking hell...

[four-wheel-drive]

I have nothing against fracking it does annoy me when we see on TV these protesters banging drums etc I think most of them are there for the fun of it and are just waiting for the next thing to protest about and I expect most of them do not live in the area and are on benefits.

 

The thing that makes me thing that it should not be done in our country is unlike in the US where the price of gas and fuel oil went down for the people who live there any gas oil found in the UK will just be sold on the open market to the highest bidder only later if there is any problems will our government have to pay to put it rite one of the joys of living it this country.

[krugerandsmith]

I have nothing against fracking it does annoy me when we see on TV these protesters banging drums etc I think most of them are there for the fun of it and are just waiting for the next thing to protest about and I expect most of them do not live in the area and are on benefits.

 

The thing that makes me thing that it should not be done in our country is unlike in the US where the price of gas and fuel oil went down for the people who live there any gas oil found in the UK will just be sold on the open market to the highest bidder only later if there is any problems will our government have to pay to put it rite one of the joys of living it this country.

 

Now you know that isn't true .... look at all the cheap oil and gas we received from the North sea Hmm. The Government never pays for anything ... You I and everybody else does.

[keg]

If it's sold on the open market then surely this will drive prices down, make us less reliant on Putin and his gang and also increase our take from taxes?

[figgy]

I think the powers that be are assessing how much gas were sat on and it will be kept until needed. If the world order collapsed and no oil or gas was available to us at a cost we could afford were still sat on huge coal reserves.

[mick miller]

I can't quite see how aquifers can be affected? You drill through porous water bearing rock and run a liner. The liner is cemented into the preceding liner and the annulus sealed. The process continues until you reach the gas/oil bearing rock, presumably many hundreds, or even thousands of feet below the water bearing layers. Then you run your final liner all the way to the final zone, plug and cement the base, run a set of guns, puncture the liner, plug above and pump like billy-o a mixture of frac sand and water under immense pressure until the rock hundreds of metres around is fractured, the sand plugs the void creating a nice porous environment through which the gas can flow. Job jobbed.

 

The liner, usually 6", runs all the way to the surface; so unless several of the casings and the subsequent cement jobs fail in succession, the remaining layers of rock above the fractured zone are effectively sealed.\

 

Think of it as something like a big, up-ended telescope, only the tubes of each section run all the way to the surface. It's not like you run one pipe all the way through from start to finish and if that splits you're ********. Besides, I use to run remedial jobs like scab liners to fix such issues in the field if and when that happened (rarely).

[four-wheel-drive]

I have always thought that it is wrong that this country made our money by making stuff but most of these middle eastern countries got stinking rich by just letting other people get the oil and gas out from under the land and what have they done with this money sort out there countries giving the people living there free schools /health treatment etc etc no just invested it in the west so that they and there families will never need to work again nice if you can get it.

[mick miller]

....

Edited May 25, 2016 by mick miller

[grrclark]

Nice to see comments made by the genuinely well informed, thanks Mick & FN

 

I would hazard a guess and say that 99.9% of those moaning about fracking would look with a blank stare if shown a seismic plot of the area, even when it shows that the area to be fractured is several thousand feet below any aquifers, they would look with a blank stare when shown the well design and how the casing is designed to be as stable and reliable as it can be because a poorly designed casing can lead to a blocked well and no money. Even if both those thing showed there was no risk they would still protest because they cannot understand it so therefor it is bad.

 

It is akin to the flat earth believers or the zealots that burned scientists/engineers and called them heretics.

 

The wilfully ignorant look at those with knowledge with huge suspicion and default to a position of thinking they are trying to screw me.

 

Ditchman, the fears/risks that you outlined are genuine and credible, but they can be mitigated and we have all the knowledge, skill and talent to do it in this country.

[big bad lindz]

I can't quite see how aquifers can be affected? You drill through porous water bearing rock and run a liner. The liner is cemented into the preceding liner and the annulus sealed. The process continues until you reach the gas/oil bearing rock, presumably many hundreds, or even thousands of feet below the water bearing layers. Then you run your final liner all the way to the final zone, plug and cement the base, run a set of guns, puncture the liner, plug above and pump like billy-o a mixture of frac sand and water under immense pressure until the rock hundreds of metres around is fractured, the sand plugs the void creating a nice porous environment through which the gas can flow. Job jobbed.

 

The liner, usually 6", runs all the way to the surface; so unless several of the casings and the subsequent cement jobs fail in succession, the remaining layers of rock above the fractured zone are effectively sealed.\

 

Think of it as something like a big, up-ended telescope, only the tubes of each section run all the way to the surface. It's not like you run one pipe all the way through from start to finish and if that splits you're*******. Besides, I use to run remedial jobs like scab liners to fix such issues in the field if and when that happened (rarely).

 

spot on I take it you work in the O&G industry or at least work for a drilling company.

Some people don't realise that Fracking has been going on for years offshore of Great Yarmouth and Humberside. Unfortunately its all new to UK onshore O&G fields so hence the uproar from people who don't know what they are talking about. So maybe some of the questions that should be asked is how deep are the water aquifers and how deep will the actual fracking be. More to the point how do the geologists know there is gas there in the first place surely some test wells have already been drilled ?? it cant all have be done from seismic testing without someone complaining

[Brixsmaid]

So fracking is similar to well simulation/intervention by the sounds of it? If so its been around for years, I had a very limited involvement in the central North Sea, with it, must be 15 years ago and just one job. I just put and kept the vessel in the right place, cleared the after deck and pumped away as I remember it as a simple ship driver/DPO!

Edited May 26, 2016 by Brixsmaid

[mick miller]

 

spot on I take it you work in the O&G industry or at least work for a drilling company.

Some people don't realise that Fracking has been going on for years offshore of Great Yarmouth and Humberside. Unfortunately its all new to UK onshore O&G fields so hence the uproar from people who don't know what they are talking about. So maybe some of the questions that should be asked is how deep are the water aquifers and how deep will the actual fracking be. More to the point how do the geologists know there is gas there in the first place surely some test wells have already been drilled ?? it cant all have be done from seismic testing without someone complaining

I used to work for Dowell, then Schlumberger - but left the oil patch in 98 for a nice indoor job with no heavy lifting!

[BrowningB525]

So fracking is similar to well simulation/intervention by the sounds of it? If so its been around for years, I had a very limited involvement in the central North Sea, with it, must be 15 years ago and just one job. I just put and kept the vessel in the right place, cleared the after deck and pumped away as I remember it as a simple ship driver/DPO!

My understanding is that modern fracking is just a form of well stimulation with directional drilling to reduce the number of wells. Hopefully someone who knows what they're talking about will correct me if I'm wrong.

[mick miller]

I don't think this is right. Fracturing, as I understand it, is exactly as I explained. A single well bore that is punctured and then fractured using 'sand' suspended in a viscous liquid to aid penetration. The fracturing is created by immense pressure at the surface that, along with the well hydrostatic, simply shatters the rock around the bottom of the well in a horizontal plane. The sand is used to bridge the created void and allow for increase permeability in the rock, thus allowing a greater flow than you would ordinarily get.

 

The perception is that oil or gas is held in reservoirs or cavern like voids in the rock. The reality is that it is contained within the rock itself and the degree of communication between these tiny voids (a bit like a very fine sponge) in the rock affects whether the gas/oil flows freely or not (I forget the specific term used). I would imagine that shale creates a poor environment for gas to flow freely and so fracturing is used to increase that and make the well and reserves viable.

 

Directional drilling allows several wells to be drilled from a single location so as to maximise the capacity. Think of those fields of nodding donkeys in America, all single well bores drilled vertically but exploiting one field. These days you'd simply have a single processing platform and several wells that, a bit like an inverted mushroom, reach out to the extremities of the field.