Boomtown Shreveport, LA Concerned About Drilling

September 02, 2009

Shreveport holds hearings on drilling regs

Shreveport, which is in the heart of the Haynesville Shale natural gas play, is struggling with some of the same issues that Fort Worth addressed last year: How to write an ordinance that allows natural gas drilling in an urban area, while protecting air and water quality.

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009909020338

-- Mike Lee

Scare Tactics About Fracing Gas Wells

Companies have been fracing oil and gas wells for decades with almost no danger to near surface groundwater aquifers. Wells are carefully drilled through these zones and steel casing is set and cemented in place to protect the acquifer. Most, if not all hydraulic fracturing is done thousands of feet below these acquifers and it is near impossible for the frac fluid to get into the groundwater. Do a search on this blog about "fracing" or "hydraulic fracturing".

As with the man-caused global warming myth, people opposed to drilling use the fear tactic of "polluted drinking water" to sway public opinion. Generating fear has become the standard operating procedure for environmental groups, and they are totally shameless about their lies. Think of drowning polar bears, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, monster hurricanes, etc.; all nonsense of course, but such images influence the opinion of uneducated people and politicians.
Peter

Debate continues on frac-ing fluid

Information continues to come out about the safety of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing. Here's an analysis by an environmental group in the Marcellus Shale.

http://www.preservethefingerlakes.com/id16.html

Closer to home, here's a Star-Telegram story about fracturing chemicals from last year:

Gas-removal method may be subject to more rules

-- Mike Lee

New York Recognizes Shale Gas As A Good Thing

October 02, 2009

New York state may lift its drilling ban

New York's state moratorium on natural gas drilling may soon be lifted, now that the the state environmental agency has finished an environmental impact statement.

Upstate New York sits over the Marcellus Shale, a gigantic shale gas field that is similar to the Barnett Shale.

Pro-Publica, the non-profit investigative reporting group, reports that the state may allow drilling in New York City's watershed: http://www.propublica.org/feature/new-york-state-paves-way-for-gas-drilling-with-release-of-review-930

There are some stipulations, though, according to Pro Public:

-- Operators must disclose all the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, including their concentrations

-- Operators must complete a checlist and certification form before any well can be hydraulically fractured

-- Residential drinking water wells near drilling sites must be tested for contaminants priot to drilling, to establish baseline information in case an accident occurs

-- Some waste pits, which have been responsible for water contamination in other parts of the country, will be prohibited in the New York City watershed, and limited in other parts of the state. Drillers will be required to store their waste in steel tanks in some cases.

A report by Pro Publica in 2008 -- which said the state wasn't ready to cope with water use, waste disposal and other downsides of gas drilling -- convinced the state to impose a moratorium on gas drilling.

Many of the same companies that developed the Barnett Shale are operating in the Marcellus Shale, including XTO, Chesapeake Energy, Devon and Range Resources.

Here's a link to the full report from the state:

http://www.dec.ny.gov/energy/58440.html

-- Mike Lee

The Clean Skies Alliance

The Clean Skies Alliance, a trade group that lobbies for more use of natural gas, has picked a lawyer who specializes in climate change as its new CEO.

The Clean Skies Alliance, closely affiliated with Chesapeake Energy, has lobbied against programs that would promote clean coal, and in favor of more natural gas exploration. The group has its own website, www.cleanskies.com and airs a weekly television program on a Washington, D.C., TV station.

Greg Staple, a former partner at the law firm Vinson & Elkins, before joining the Clean Skies Foundation as a policy analyst.

Read below the jump for the full press release.

Continue reading "" »

Much More Information About The Barnett Shale

Here is an excellent blog about the Barnett Shale. It contains a wealth of information and is created and maintained by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

http://startelegram.typepad.com/barnett_shale/2009/10/another-shale-gas-play.html

Gas Everywhere

Another shale gas play

The Barnett Shale may be the granddaddy of shale gas plays -- this is where producers worked out the technology that made it feasible to recover natural gas from unconventional formations.

But there seem to be plenty of additions to the family. The Houston Chronicle reports on the latest find, the Eagle Ford shale in South Texas. Its advantages include lower production costs, easy terrain and a local population land owners who "have grown comfortable with the industry after decades of oil drilling," the Chron reports.

There are also some interesting numbers on the break-even cost for producers.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/energy/6653999.html

-- Mike Lee

Shale Gas Exploration And Development Goes International

It is no surprise to this geologist that the technology used to produce gas from the Fort Worth Basin and its Barnett Shale is finding its way to other parts of the world.

Shale, that often organic-rich, dark gray or black, very fine grained sedimentary rock, is found in every sedimentary basin, both present and ancient, on Earth. It is sometimes called "mud-rock" as is appropriate to its origin.

The organic matter in these shales can be converted into oil and natural gas as it is heated and buried by thousands of feet of additional sediments. The fact that these rocks contain a flammable gas (natural gas) has been known since antiquity. However, from an economic standpoint, shale has mostly just been considered a "source" rock for oil and gas found elsewhere. Times have changed.

Now shale can be considered a source, seal, trap, and reservoir of gas, (and sometimes oil) --- an all in one package. With the proper combination of horizontal drilling and rock fracturing technology these shales can produce very economic quantities of gas. This has been proven in the Barnett Shale in north Texas, and to a lesser, but growing extent elsewhere. Since shales of this nature are so prevalent around the world, it makes sense that the combination of horizontal drilling, the logging and steering of these wells while drilling, and the fracture treatment of the rocks is finding its way to countries outside of the United States.

Natural gas has many uses, from generating electricity, to heating our homes, cooking our food and powering our vehicles. It burns very cleanly and its only by-product is harmless water vapor and carbon dioxide. If it were not so clean, how could we use it in our homes to cook our food? Are you listening EPA?

If President Obama was really interested in stimulating the economy he would be promoting the production and more widespread use of natural gas. Maybe his advisers are just ignorant of the facts. It certainly makes far more sense to use inexpensive and ubiquitous natural gas than it does to spend Billions on solar panels and wind turbines, which can never do more than supply a fraction of our energy needs.

If anyone doubts the jobs, equipment and technology required to drill and produce gas from these shales, they should visit an active drill site, or witness a frac job. They should also consider that for every person working in the field, there are probably tens or hundreds of people working behind the scenes. It is a big and growing business. Browse this blog and you will find many, more relevant articles and information on this subject. Pass it around. Send it to your Congressman. Send it to Mr. Obama.

The following article from the "Fort Worth Star-Telegram" tells more of the story.
Peter

Barnett Shale seen as model for drillers worldwide

Posted Tuesday, Sep. 29, 2009 (source)

By JACK Z. SMITH

jzsmith@star-telegram.com

The search for unconventional natural gas deposits in areas like the Barnett Shale of North Texas not only is dominating gas drilling in the United States, but it will also become pervasive worldwide.

That was the message given Tuesday by two experts at the opening of a three-day energy conference in the Fort Worth Convention Center.

"I think unconventional gas is the future, both in the U.S. and overseas," said Vello Kuuskraa, president of Advanced Resources International, known for his work in energy economics and petroleum recovery technologies.

Unconventional gas includes shale gas, tight gas and coal-bed methane, deposits that require measures such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to enhance their recovery and make them economically feasible.

Unconventional gas accounts for more than half of U.S. production, Kuuskraa said, even though what he called two new "rock stars" among shale fields — the Haynesville Shale in northwest Louisiana and East Texas, and the Marcellus Shale in the Appalachian region of the eastern United States — are just beginning to be significantly developed.

Meanwhile, Kuuskraa said he expects his end-of-the-year calculations to show that the Barnett Shale has become the biggest gas-producing area in the U.S., outstripping the San Juan Basin in New Mexico and Colorado.

The U.S. is leading the way in the search for unconventional gas, and developing the technology that will "be used around the world," said Stephen Holditch, head of the petroleum engineering department at Texas A&M University and former president of the Society of Petroleum Engineers-International.

Oil and gas exploration and production companies either based in North Texas or with substantial operations in the region are in the thick of the search for unconventional gas.

That includes three Fort Worth-based companies, XTO Energy, Range Resources and Quicksilver Resources; two Oklahoma City-based companies, Devon Energy and Chesapeake Energy, the top two Barnett Shale producers; and Irving-based Exxon Mobil Corp., which is drilling for unconventional gas everywhere from Colorado to Hungary.

Kuuskraa said Exxon Mobil is said to have gotten encouraging results from initial drilling in the Mako Trough in Hungary.

There are reportedly "massive concentrations" of gas — estimated at 700 billion cubic feet per square mile — in a small area of the Eastern European nation, he said.

Future unconventional gas recovery worldwide could significantly expand supplies, which would help make gas increasingly attractive as a fuel for transportation and electric power generation, Kuuskraa forecast at the Unconventional Gas International Conference & Exhibition, which resumes today.

JACK Z. SMITH, 817-390-7724