[onlooker]

well just been reading up some about this subject of Hydraulic fracturing. Trying to get up to speed with some of the more erudite members here about this subject.
It sure seems like opinions vary wildly on it's potential. This quote is from a site Energyfromshale.org "After just two to five days of hydraulic fracturing, a well can supply oil or natural gas for 20 to 40 years." Again I am just a layman but this seems just hyperbole. Curious what others think of this particular claim. I recommend Richard Heinberg who I know from reading his book the "The Party is Over". He seems very knowledgeable about the energy sector and the future options. His new book is "Snake Oil", which I myself have not read but have just read summaries and reviews of. He argues that Shale Fracking is but a costly distraction
from the necessary work of reducing our fossil fuel dependence via renewables. In fact a statement he uttered was that he think the shale boom will be pretty much over this decade. What do others think?

[dissident]

well just been reading up some about this subject of Hydraulic fracturing. Trying to get up to speed with some of the more erudite members here about this subject.
It sure seems like opinions vary wildly on it's potential. This quote is from a site Energyfromshale.org "After just two to five days of hydraulic fracturing, a well can supply oil or natural gas for 20 to 40 years." Again I am just a layman but this seems just hyperbole. Curious what others think of this particular claim. I recommend Richard Heinberg who I know from reading his book the "The Party is Over". He seems very knowledgeable about the energy sector and the future options. His new book is "Snake Oil", which I myself have not read but have just read summaries and reviews of. He argues that Shale Fracking is but a costly distraction
from the necessary work of reducing our fossil fuel dependence via renewables. In fact a statement he uttered was that he think the shale boom will be pretty much over this decade. What do others think?

This claim is utter rubbish. It is an established fact that production from fracked wells (for shale gas plays) follows a different class of time dependent functions compared to conventional wells. They lack the fat tails and this directly implies that the number of wells that need to be drilled is much larger to maintain field production. The ultimate cause of this difference is physics. Fracking cannot convert a small porosity rock like shale into porous rock like sandstone or dolomite. So the volume of gas accessible after fracking is smaller than from a conventional well and the flow to the well peters out faster.

[rockdoc123]

The ultimate cause of this difference is physics. Fracking cannot convert a small porosity rock like shale into porous rock like sandstone or dolomite. So the volume of gas accessible after fracking is smaller than from a conventional well and the flow to the well peters out faster.

Not quite. Porosity in shales ican be higher than porosity in carbonate or sandstone reservoirs, this is a product of being well sorted (a shale with high quartz content and low clay content can be quite porous). The pore spaces are small which in turn means pore throats which are largely responsible for conventional permeability are small as well. As an example normal conventional matrix permeabilities in good reservoirs is usually above 100 millidarcies. Typical shale matrix permeability is on the order of nano-darcies or to put it another way a typical conventional reservoir would have pore throat sizes of .01 mm whereas a shale reservoir would have pore throat sizes on the order of .0000001 mm.

Fracking a shale that has hydrocarbon in its pore space simply provides a high permeability path between pore spaces and the well bore. The rapid decline early on and the long flat tail to the production curve associated with shales is a product of flush production coming from the fractures which are quickly depleted and then flat production rates determined by the rate by which hydrocarbons can flow from matrix through micro cracks to fill the propped induced fracture.

[ROCKMAN]

"This claim is utter rubbish". Actually it isn't. But unless qualified it can be very misleading. The lifetime of any well is much more controlled by the nature of the reservoir than how it's completed. It has already been proven that frac'd Eagle Ford wells won't produce for 2 decades before reaching non-commercial flow rates. But Bakken wells will last longer than EFS wells. And wells in the New Albany Shale (an Appalachian Basin trend) have commercially produced for 30+ years. But the key point: those wells typically produce less than $100 of NG per day. Likewise there are frac'd wells in the Permian Basin that are still producing since they went on line in the 70's. But, again, at very low stripper rates.

[coffeeguyzz]

Onlooker, I think it is great to encounter an inquisitive mind, one receptive to various streams of input on this most divisive, emotionally charged topic.
I, personally, am an unabashed, uber cornucopian fossil fuel booster. (Checking up on the predictive track record of some 'authorities' may provide an enlightening experience vis-à-vis their accuracy ... or lack thereof).
The amount of hydrocarbons remaining in the matrix surrounding horizontals is regularly estimated at 90%.
Ten per cent is currently being recovered. I'll not list the numerous process, techniques, hardware that are in the early - even planning only - stages, but suffice to say the high-intensity fracturing process which rubbilize rock near the wellbore, allowing the MUCH closer spacing of laterals, is but one approach recently adopted by operators within the past year.
Tools conveyed by Coiled Tubing is enabling 80/100 stages to be frac'd with stages 100' long and one entry point - no more unstimulated areas per frac. 40 stages per day is now routine.
The use of so called energizing fluid to frac and carry proppant is continuing apace as is the re-injection of field gas (check out deethree up in the upper Bakken silt). The ongoing increase in recovery rates points to further implementation going forward.
Re-frac'ing is picking up steam as the economics are proving favorable to applying new processes to "old" wells pre 2010.
The EOR processes using Liquified/emulsified Nat gas, nitrogen, or CO2 are entering field trials in all the basins with the expectations of significant success. The tens of billions of dollars in research money provided by GE alone should prompt discerning observers to look less to past output and more to future potential to accurately grasp what lies ahead.

[dissident]

"This claim is utter rubbish". Actually it isn't. But unless qualified it can be very misleading. The lifetime of any well is much more controlled by the nature of the reservoir than how it's completed. It has already been proven that frac'd Eagle Ford wells won't produce for 2 decades before reaching non-commercial flow rates. But Bakken wells will last longer than EFS wells. And wells in the New Albany Shale (an Appalachian Basin trend) have commercially produced for 30+ years. But the key point: those wells typically produce less than $100 of NG per day. Likewise there are frac'd wells in the Permian Basin that are still producing since they went on line in the 70's. But, again, at very low stripper rates.

Sorry but Bakken has nothing to do with tight gas. It is a dolomite layer (i.e. regular reservoir rock) sandwiched between shale-like low porosity cap rock. The Bakken is a variant of a conventional reservoir and it is extremely misleading to compare to fracked tight gas fields like the Marcellus. My point about tight gas deposits stands. You just cannot get the flow of gas through shale-like reservoir rock compared to sandstone and dolomite. No amount of fracking can increase shale-like rock porosity to that of sandstone. All that fracking does is produce a large surface area for slow outgassing from the tight rock matrix. This gas flows towards the well through the fracture channels. It does not flow towards the well at any commercially viable rate from the part of the rock, which is most of it, that is not fractured.

The higher required drilling rate and faster well depletion is a trivial consequence of the physics. Lots of shysters would have the world believe that all gas wells are the same.

[rockdoc123]

The Bakken is a variant of a conventional reservoir and it is extremely misleading to compare to fracked tight gas fields like the Marcellus.
You just cannot get the flow of gas through shale-like reservoir rock compared to sandstone and dolomite. No amount of fracking can increase shale-like rock porosity to that of sandstone. All that fracking does is produce a large surface area for slow outgassing from the tight rock matrix. This gas flows towards the well through the fracture channels. It does not flow towards the well at any commercially viable rate from the part of the rock, which is most of it, that is not fractured.

The Bakken has several producing layers. The first production actually came from the upper shale unit but was followed by success in the middle tight dolostone unit. That being said more and more wells are focusing specifically on the upper and lower shale units in the Bakken which behave as a typical shale play. Elm Coulee Field has seen considerable activity to this end as of late.

The middle dolostone is by no means a conventional reservoir, it is tight dolostone with a permeability of as low as 0.01 millidarcies and is classifed by anyone active in the business as unconventional. This permeability is, of course, much higher than typical shale permeabilities which are in the nanodarcy range. But gas will not flow through that low of permeability without the aid of a fracture. The difference in reservoir behavior is that the permeability difference between the middle Bakken tight dolostone matrix and a propped fracture is somewhat less than the permeability difference between the upper Bakken shale matrix and a propped fracture. Because the flush production comes from the fracture the actual IP rate (initial production) for upper or lower Bakken shales can easily be as high as for the middle Bakken. Where production differs is the middle Bakken will have slightly less early decline rate and will stabilize at a higher flat rate. That being said in reality the upper, lower and middle Bakken are one system with hydrocarbons from the upper and lower units replenishing hydrocarbons as they are produced from the middle unit. In this sense the middle unit is an intermediary conduit. Claiming the middle Bakken is a conventional play is completely inaccurate.

As to your statement

No amount of fracking can increase shale-like rock porosity to that of sandstone

Once again shows you are confusing porosity with permeability. There is no intent to increase porosity through fracking; the intent is to increase permeability.

[coffeeguyzz]

Hey, dissident, I just re-read your posts and I gotta ask ya, with all due respect, do you follow much of the production reports coming out of the shale plays? Seriously, cuz when you describe [b]slow[b] outgassing from frac'd gas wells, you cannot be including the likes of the half dozen monster wells that Rice Energy has coming out of the Utica ... the ones that are choked back and producing 17 million cubic feet/day (depicted in oil equivalence, nearly 3,000boepd). Their Bigfoot 9H is coming up on its first full year online and will exceed 5 1/2 b (that's billion with a 'b')cf - nearly a million boe ... one well ... one year.
The Mighty Marcellus play has just been described by the EIA as covering 72,000 sq miles, an area slightly larger than the entire state of North Dakota. The underlying Utica is not only significantly larger in area, it has a much thicker payzone.
The science of conducting more "intelligent" fracs is ongoing and the operators' results are provable demonstrations of that.

[sparky]

.
the " 20 years production" is true as far as an advertisement claim is , but the exctraction rate is grossly non linear
for comparison the first drilled well , the Drake well drilled 150 years ago , in cherrytree township, Pennsylvania is still producing
.........about a gallon a day , it is a curiosity and a museum

[ROCKMAN]

dis - "Sorry but Bakken has nothing to do with tight gas.: Apparently you're not following the conversation very closely. I was responding to the statement mischaracterize all the unconventional reservoirs (both oil and NG productive). Please try to stay up. Obviously there is no one size fits all characterzation...just as I pointed out. As far as the Bakken goes those wells do tend to have a longer commercial life then the Eagle Ford Shale wells. OTOH those later years of production are at such low rates that those Bakken wells are not very relevant to the Big Picture.

[careinke]

Onlooker, I think it is great to encounter an inquisitive mind, one receptive to various streams of input on this most divisive, emotionally charged topic.
I, personally, am an unabashed, uber cornucopian fossil fuel booster. (Checking up on the predictive track record of some 'authorities' may provide an enlightening experience vis-à-vis their accuracy ... or lack thereof).
The amount of hydrocarbons remaining in the matrix surrounding horizontals is regularly estimated at 90%.
Ten per cent is currently being recovered. I'll not list the numerous process, techniques, hardware that are in the early - even planning only - stages, but suffice to say the high-intensity fracturing process which rubbilize rock near the wellbore, allowing the MUCH closer spacing of laterals, is but one approach recently adopted by operators within the past year.
Tools conveyed by Coiled Tubing is enabling 80/100 stages to be frac'd with stages 100' long and one entry point - no more unstimulated areas per frac. 40 stages per day is now routine.
The use of so called energizing fluid to frac and carry proppant is continuing apace as is the re-injection of field gas (check out deethree up in the upper Bakken silt). The ongoing increase in recovery rates points to further implementation going forward.
Re-frac'ing is picking up steam as the economics are proving favorable to applying new processes to "old" wells pre 2010.
The EOR processes using Liquified/emulsified Nat gas, nitrogen, or CO2 are entering field trials in all the basins with the expectations of significant success. The tens of billions of dollars in research money provided by GE alone should prompt discerning observers to look less to past output and more to future potential to accurately grasp what lies ahead.

If true, this is a very, very, scary post, environmentally speaking.

[ROCKMAN]

care - Actually no scarier then it has been. Regardless of the number of frac stages the potential for environmental damage caused DIRECTLY by the frac'ng process itself is still small. The potential pollution remains to be with the improper/illegal disposal of the produced frac fluids. Just as it has been since frac'ng began over half a century ago.

[careinke]

care - Actually no scarier then it has been. Regardless of the number of frac stages the potential for environmental damage caused DIRECTLY by the frac'ng process itself is still small. The potential pollution remains to be with the improper/illegal disposal of the produced frac fluids. Just as it has been since frac'ng began over half a century ago.

Actually Rock, I was more worried about the extra amount of FF available to burn using these methods. Frac fluids is just a localized side issue.

[onlooker]

Yes that is what is worrying many now. Can we afford to keep burning whatever is still left of FF. But then again can we afford not too. Lose Lose situation.

[coffeeguyzz]

Hey, care, as Lili von Schtupp said in "Blazing Saddles" "It's twue, it's twue!".
Just so you all don't get too down about this stuff, the LENR/LANR technology seems poised for an imminent breakout in the coming years.
Virtually every source that I've encountered that disparages this field seems profoundly ignorant of the people, companies and track record of this off-the-wall technology.
Interesting times indeed ...

[ROCKMAN]

care - A valid point but only to a small degree. As I've said many times folks greatly over estimate the amount of energy we use to directly develop fossil fuel resources. I make what seems like an extreme quess but I bet if we could find the data it would prove me correct: in the US more energy is used by McDonald to deliver those "healthy meals" then all the energy used to drill and frac every shale well even during the high point of the boom. Might even be able to use Starbucks as another example. But all that pails in comparison to what we burn driving the kids to Chucky Cheese et al. LOL.