You would be $20 richer

 

Whatever they can get the cheapest is in that rig.its all about money. Always has been always will be.

 

All things that I completely agree have an impact on the environment, and all things that are coming under more regulation, up here anyway. If you work for an oil company, you're aware of the ever increasing regulations in place, and that there's very little that's random going on out there.

I could point you to oil fields in the middle east or Russia that are unmitigated environmental disasters and argue that based on that what companies are doing in North America is insignificant and doesn't really matter.

The problem with those arguments is that two wrongs don't make a right. Just because little Timmy across the street is doing it doesn't mean that we should or that it's OK to do.

Yes, I do, and the oil industry's record proves it. I know you can point to a few exceptions, I can too, but there are 10s of thousands of oil wells in Alberta and 100s of thousands in NA that have been drilled without issue.

That's why wells are drilled with fresh water until they've reached a depth below ground water and then have casing cemented in place to prevent any contamination during the drilling process or production. It's why leases are built the way they are and why on lease spills and contamination have been all but eliminated and are strictly regulated.

Not really worth responding to.

I could show you some pretty ugly things done routinely as little as 20 years ago that are now completely illegal and strictly enforced. Progress is being made, but no company, industry, or regulation is perfect, there will always be problems and loopholes.

If you want diesel for that truck of yours, that comes with the territory.

 

Saying "there are xxx amount of wells drilled without issues" is like saying "I know xxx amount of people that smoke and are healthy."

I know of plenty of issues and disasters.
When you frac, you create a pathway between 2 or more formations, and you can't control the frac with certainty.
Lots of fracs end up connecting hydrocarbon bearing formations with ground water bearing formations.

Without going into specifics, there are companies now that don't even pump enough cement to return back to surface on the outside of the casing.
And that casing and cement we speak of, it doesn't last forever, either.
In the presence of H2S, it degrades quickly, and sometimes stainless steel casing is used, but rarely, I heard it was 20k$ per joint.

 

Dang all this for H&S stopping there tunes. Shew.

 

No, actually it isn't. It's demonstrating a long standing safety record based on industry practices.

People cross the street by the millions every day, when done properly, it's a very safe thing to do and poses no risk to the person crossing the street or the motorist, however, unfortunately, despite this fact, people do get killed crossing the street.

This is partially true. Frac's rarely extend beyond specific formations or porous zones within those formations. There are no guarantees, but industry has a pretty solid understanding of the physics and mechanics behind fracing, they know with a pretty good degree of certainty where those fracs are going. It's a pretty essential piece of the puzzle to understand.

This statement is simply false.

Again, you're pointing out that companies that break the law, and therefore the laws and their intentions are not valid. That's not a credible arguement.

You're right, it doesn't last forever, and that's why throughout the producing lifespan of the well it's constantly tested, pressure checked and repaired as necessary. When the casing is beyond repair or a well is finally abandoned, the wellbore is filled with cement and plugged off to prevent cross-flow. This cement and casing combo is every bit or more effective than the natural barries to vertical migration.

 

stop reading the commy govt hand book. Save the world. Just sell your tuck move to California and buy a govt motor volt go charge it off if a wind mill. Stop using anything that comes from Fossil fuels. I'm tired of Hearing about how bad oil company's. EPA and The media are really quick to take an Accident and make sound like it the end of the world. Greece 2 America's turn.

 

The last well I remember abandoning was excavated around, and cut off and buried, and there was a packer set inside.
Hardly what I would consider ideal, but it was all that was legally required.

This is just a little snippet i stole :

In many of the older fields previously abandoned, many of the wells were potentially left unplugged and their locations not
properly documented (Pennsylvania DEP, 2000). As these old fields are reentered to apply newer technologies such as solvent or CO2 flooding, the reservoir pressure is increased due to the injection of fluids for oil recovery. When this higher pressure is applied to unplugged or poorly
plugged wells, there is a chance that the formation fluids will bypass the plugging materials and migrate uphole. This can cause problems with the fresh water aquifers in the area by allowing gas, oil or salt water to contaminate the fresh water.

 

I don't even think they're stopping, I think they're just "re-positioning".

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by parkland

I would disagree with you. Damages are constantly down played or avoided, not prevented.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. I see first hand everyday the lengths and expense we go to in order to prevent damage. Simply put, you can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want fuel for your truck, it comes at a cost, there is an impact, but I do see the positive results of increased regulation in minimizing that impact.

Quote:

Fracs are tricky, you can control to a degree where they go, but you can't control where they stop. To put emphasis on the crap that guys get away with, a company pumped 10 times what the plan was, into a formation, and caused a lot of damage and never got fines or anything. Right into the aquifer.

Again, not really.

The first factor is the reservoir itself and all the parameters associated with that (composition, porosity, permeability, etc...) and then the actual physical size of the reservoir and it's bounding lithologies. With that info, the frac size, fluid type, concentration, pumping rate, etc... can all be manipulated to control pretty precisely where that frac is going both vertically and laterally. It's big money and big science to understand this stuff, it's critical to well performance, well densities, etc.... and that's critical to the bottom line.

I don't put a lot of stock in "company z pumped 10X more than they should have and ruined an aquifer" type statements. In 15+ years, I've never seen or heard of it. I know the costs and issues involved, and it simply doesn't make sense.

That said, I don't doubt it might have happened somewhere sometime, but like I keep repeating, one bad apple doesn't spoil the bunch. With thinking like that we'd have all blackballed Ford and banned the sale of the 6.7 after Rickatic's issues.

Quote:

Um no it's not. BTW you can't just google this type of information. You pretty much have to be in the field or know guys to even know about it.

You're exactly right, you can't just Google this, you also can't believe every bit of gossip you hear floating around the camp or the internet. I work with this every day, hands on, and have personally overseen the drilling and frac'ing of hundreds of wells. I've been involved in companies that have drilled thousands of wells. There's been 10s of thousands of wells drilled in AB Canada in that time frame, and I'm not aware of any wells that have frac'd into an overlying freshwater acquifer. It's a myth created by those who don't understand what frac'ing actually is or how it works.

Again, I don't doubt that there are a couple places in the USA, where regulations were (are) more lax, that acquifers have been damaged in the past. That does NOT mean that it is in any way common or a legitimate risk when frac'ing is done properly.

Quote:

The last

I can't speak to regulations in your state. In Canada, abandonment procedures are as I described them. When a well is abnd in this way, pressure variation in a reservoir unit is inconsequential. Furthermore, all fresh water formations would be behind two layers of casing, an initial surface casing, and the final production casing, both of which are cemented in place. For formation fluids to contact the fresh water aquifers, both systems would have to fail within the wellbore.

In some ways I guess the son is guilty of the father's crimes.

Legacy oil fields from pre 1970's are an issue, especially those from the 50's and 60's when records of what when are let's say, less than complete. Industry in AB has set up an "orphan well" fund, by which a percentage of all revenue is held back and used to pay for the remediation of improperly abandoned wells from these oil fields. It's costly and messy, and not enough is being done fast enough, but the work is getting done.

Fortunately, we've learned a lot since then, and the new regulations in place will prevent the same thing from having to be done in 50 years time from now.

Best post in a long time. You're exactly right. It's an interesting debate, but this likely isn't the time or place. I'll leave it at that from my end, it was fun.

 

Thanks for all the great info B&L.
I find it quite interesting.

FYI Parkland is a canuck, Manitoba I believe.

 

Great discussions in here boys...thanks for keeping it all civil

 

We obviously don't agree on some things, no point in having a little flame war...
There are a lot of people that would take either side of our opinion, so likely an argument that would never end lol.

 

I don't understand how you could possibly back up that statement sir. If your statement were correct then the CO2 levels in the atmosphere would already be rising indefinitely and uncontrollably. That's not happening. You may be right only to the extent that the equilibrium point between CO2 producers and CO2 eliminators is at a slightly higher CO2 level than it was before, but the humankind CO2 output has been greatly exaggerated by the tree huggers.
At a local level I agree. The closer you are to the source of contamination, the greater the effect.
Agreed
Who is to say that we would not have cleaned things up without the EPA? I believe in individualism, and an unhealthy environment affects the individual.
People who trust that more government, laws, and regulation will actually solve our problems are fascinating to me.
Agreed that necessity breeds invention, but government regulations stifle inventions and inventors. Laws create boundaries that force invention to follow a specific line of thought, as opposed to true open-mindedness to new ways to solve a problem. Think of all the great inventions and inventors that existed in our distant past, before government became such a behemoth. Do you think that Thomas Edison would have been able to create and patent his inventions under or rules-heavy system today? I think not. Sir, government is not the path to prosperity. In fact, government stands in the way of prosperity, and of people trying to think of new ways to do things. Government just tells people what they can and cannot do. People are the path to prosperity. People work best when they are free and unincumbered by rules and regulations, not to mention heavily taxed. That's how real problems are solved.
Sir we just have completely different ways of thinking. Your belief in government, rules, and regulations is just diametrically opposed to my belief in freedom, individualism, and innovation. No amount of debate will ever make us agree. So may I suggest that we just agree to disagree, and if we ever meet up let's have a beer together!

Carl

 

As far as ground water and formations go, there are many things we don't know.
There are lots of theories, lots of evidence and proof, but weird things continue to happen.

There are many formations that are water bearing of some type, many of these can be really close to oil bearing formations, and many of them actually FLOW!
That is to say, they don't just sit there making sand wet, the are moving from "somewhere, to somewhere else".

An example of this I know of is the huge underground "lake" that plagues the potash mines in Saskatchewan. The cores look like giant worm burrows, and it flows with salt water.
I can't remember the exact depth, but I'm thinking around 900 meters.

So if oil wells somewhere around that formation lose oil into the water formation, where does it go?
When test holes get drilled with invert mud (diesel or mineral oil), where does it go?
It's flowing, so it goes somewhere!

This is just what I mean we don't know enough.