Fracking is a controversial issue around the world. Although it’s a booming industry in the US, it’s still in its infancy in the UK.
Fracking is short for hydraulic fracturing, the term used to describe the process when oil and gas are extracted from shale rock. The UK uses about 3 trillion cubic feet of gas per year. If Britain could extract 10% of its shale gas deposits, it could hypothetically supply itself it enough energy for 25 years. So what’s all the fuss about?
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Not great news:
Hargreaves Lansdown reported today that “the UK’s fracking sector breathed a sigh of relief last night, after an attempt to suspend its progress was voted down in parliament, wrote the City A.M.” Labour failed to block the motion, so the final vote was 308 to 52 in favour of not suspending progress.
Read more: http://www.hl.co.uk/shares/stock-market-news/press-round-up/tuesday-newspaper-round-up-sse-cuts,-starbucks,-uk-construction…
As a Senior Drilling and Completions Engineer I can see a few half truths there … “first case of gel fracking” in 1986 using it says, gelled petroleum, and yet it also says the first ever hydraulic fracture done in 1948 used napalm …. which is gelled petroleum!! So how come that doesn’t count as the first gel frac?
And no mention whatsoever of the Massive Hydraulic Fractures that have been going on onshore Germany targetting the Rotliegends since the late ’70s … like the Soehligen Z10 well drilled in 1994 that was stimualted with over half a million US gallons of cross linked borate gel and almost 500tonnes of proppant. Or you could say that fracturing of horizontal wells was invented by Maersk in the Dan field in the North Sea who did the first multiple fracture stimulation of a horizontal well anywhere in the world in early 1987. By 1989 Maersk were pumping 8 million lbs of proppant into each well (in the industry it’s the amount of proppant pumped rather than the amount of fluid that is key, and 3500tonnes of so of proppant in huge; at a loading of perhaps, 10lbs proppant per gallon of fluid for a cross linked gel, you can work out the rough fluid volume of that job!)
But I guess these facts wouldn’t fit with your narrative would they?
Hi Nick
I am afraid that so little of that makes any sense to me, I’m kind of at a loss to respond.
If you think there’s gaps in our research, then by all means point them out and we can debate them, but your post above is not as cogent as it could be, and as a result I don’t really understand what your concern is, or indeed, the point you’re trying to make.
Maybe you could re phrase it with less industry jargon and a bit more layperson English?
Best wishes
Rob
All right then, Robert:
“Fracking is a is a controversial issue around the world. Although it’s a booming industry in the US it’s still in it’s infancy in the UK” NO. Fraccing is very well established in the UK oil and gas industry and has been going on in the UK since 1965 when the wells on the West Sole gas field in the Southern North Sea were fracced. And thousands of North Sea wells have been fracced with all those fracs designed and pumped by people based in Aberdeen (or possibly Great Yarmouth). You may want to use the term ‘fracking’ as a synonym for ‘unconventional gas’ or ‘shale gas’ but it’s not, and to do so is misleading.
“Although fracking has been going on for decades, technology improvements in recent years have made the practice viable” NO. Hydraulic fracturing has been going on for decades, full stop. Fraccing was viable in the Southern North Sea in the 1960s and it was so viable in the Northern North Sea in the 1980s that Schlumberger, the biggest oil services company in the world, built a specially designed frac boat, called the “Big Orange XVIII” just for the North Sea in the mid 1980s. Again, you may want to use the term ‘fracking’ as a synonym for ‘unconventional gas’ or ‘shale gas’, but it’s not and to do so is misleading.
The Quick History section says “First experimental case of fracking, Kanas, 1947” and says the fluid used was “napalm”. The Quick History section then continues “First case of gel fracking, Texas, 1986” and then says the fluid used was “Gelled Petroleum”. But seeing as napalm IS gelled petroleum, surely the first gel frac would be that first frac in Kansas in 1947?
I’d sugges the Quick History is also missing a few stages like the first hydraulic fracture in a North Sea well in the UK (1965 in the West Sole gas field); the first frac in an unconventional gas field in Germany in 1975 (tight gas, which this infographic clearly classifies as unconventional gas) first hydraulic fracture in a horizontal well anywhere in the world in 1987 in the Dan oil field in the Danish Sector of the North Sea .
But putting these dates in would 1) show that hydraulic fracturing isn’t new, 2) isn’t new to Europe and 3) isn’t new to the UK. And these facts don’t fit with your clear anti hydraulic fracturing narrative, so you left them out, along with your attempts to conflate and confuse the terms ‘fracking’ and ‘unconventional gas’ and ‘shale gas’.