New Drilling Technology For Utica Shale

In today's global economy, energy is one of the most crucial and sought after commodities. Who supplies it and how much they supply determines how much influence they have over other countries as well as the global economy. This is why hydraulic fracturing is currently such an important and controversial topic in the United States. Hydraulic fracturing, more commonly known as "fracking" or hydrofracturing, is the process of using pressurized liquids to fracture rocks and release hydrocarbons such as shale gas, which burns more efficiently than coal. This booming process of energy production provides a much needed economic boost, creating jobs and providing gas energy for Americans. The efficiently burning shale gas reduces carbon

Shale is found in many colors but those that are very dark or black contain oil and gas. Conventional drillers look for pools of oil and gas above shale rock. “The oil and natural gas migrated out of the shale and upwards through the sediment mass because of their low density. The oil and gas were often trapped within the pore spaces of an overlying rock unit such as sandstone. These types of oil and gas deposits are known as "conventional reservoirs" because the fluids can easily flow through the pores of the rock and into the extraction well”. (Geology.com King) Conventional drilling into shale has declined because those conventional supplies are disappearing and drilling companies have known this for quite some time. They also know that more oil and gas can be extracted. Geology.com’s Hobart King provides this insight. “Although drilling can extract large amounts of oil and natural gas from the reservoir rock, much of it remains trapped within the shale. This oil and gas is very difficult to remove because it is trapped within tiny pore spaces or adsorbed onto clay mineral particles that make-up the shale. In the late 1990s natural gas drilling companies developed new methods for liberating oil and natural gas that is trapped within the tiny pore spaces of shale. This discovery was significant because it unlocked some of the largest natural gas deposits in the world” (King Geology.com). The site goes on to provide this outlook for fracking oil

In 1949 Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company obtained a patent for hydraulic fracturing, the first one issued in the United States. The method gained popularity and was soon used all over the world ("Hydraulic Fracturing of Oil & Gas Wells Drilled in Shale," n.d.). Despite its early start and popularity, hydraulic fracturing was not used on a large scale until 2003 when energy companies began to explore new ways of oil and gas production in the shale formations of Texas, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Wyoming, Utah and Maryland. ("A Brief History of Hydraulic Fracturing," n.d.).

For more than sixty years, oil and gas companies have been fracturing shale rock far below the earth’s surface in order to release pockets of natural gas. The extraction of shale gas from wells dates back to 1821; but the revolutionary procedure of hydraulic fracturing—injecting pressurized fluid into shale rock to create fissures—was commercialized in the 1950s. New drilling techniques, created in the 1970s, reach previously inaccessible shale gas by allowing the use of horizontal piping within the wells. While the United States is currently dependent on foreign countries for natural resources, a hope for independence has led companies to further explore hydraulic fracturing, redefining the way that natural resources are

In 2000, shale beds where the number one source of America’s constant need for gas. Most of that production increase has come about to the growing need of hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking”, which is a process used to release oil or gas from underground formations that are otherwise too hard to mine with other tools. Over the past few years, advances in fracking technology have made huge reserves of natural gas in America economically recoverable. According to the Energy Information Administration, shale gas plays, or fields, in the United States, most notably the Marcellus, in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and New York, and the Barnett, in Texas, are said to contain enough natural gas to give power to the country for a hundred and ten years. With the everlasting specter of energy independence, some have argued that such efforts to recover natural gas need to be expanded. Activists concerned with fracking’s potential environmental hazards view the new process as a serious threat to our environment. There are many different opinions on wether or not fracking is a safe way to gain our gasoline, and to meet the growing demands of gasoline around the world. The process of fracking creates cracks that come from wells into oil and gas formations by pumping highly pressurized fluids, ceramic beads, sand, and a mixture of chemicals, into the gas formation. As this fluid holds the underground fissures open, oil and gas fly up the well to the surface where they are

There is widespread agreement among most experts that the current energy sources we use in the United States today are in need of a change. How we rely on the fossil fuels of coal and oil is a concern for two main issues: which is the negative impact on the environment and how the U.S. relies on other countries for supplies. This too has created issues on the political standpoint of the situation. This is where hydraulic fracturing comes in to play. Hydraulic Fracturing is a horizontal drilling process by the energy industry that has presented the means to solve both problems. This technology has provided the U.S. access to 100 years’ worth of energy. Natural gas has been located within the country’s borders and thousands of feet below

What is Marcellus Shale? It is a marine sedimentary rock buried thousands of feet beneath the earths surfaces. Sedimentary rock is one of the three main rock groups and is formed in four main ways: by the deposition of the weathered remains of other rocks; by the accumulation and the consolidation of sediments; by the deposition of the results of biogenic activity; and by precipitation from solution. Marcellus Shale is found throughout the Allegheny Plateau region of the northern Appalachian basin of North America. It stretches from upstate New York south through Pennsylvania to West Virginia and west to parts of Ohio. Marcellus shale was named after a town in upstate New York, the rock itself is millions of years old, formed from mud and other natural materials. Its made up of the formation of black shale that may contain lime stone beds and concentrations of iron pyrite and siderite. The Sedimentary beds and structure is very well developed. Lighter colored shales in the upper portion of the formation tend to split into small thin edged fragments after exposure. The fragments may have and leave rust stains from exposure of pyrite to air, and tiny gypsum crystals from the reaction between both of the fragments pyrite and the limestone particles. Fresh exposures of the pyriteiferous shale may develop the secondary mineralization of orange limonite and the pale yellow efflorescence or bloom of sulfur, associated with acid

Natural gas began to be extracted from the Marcellus shale formation in the mid-2000s’, and now well pads and their associated infrastructures are now well known fixtures in the Appalachian Mountain regions. Marcellus Shale is an organically rich black shale which is currently being explored by drilling as a source of natural gas. The region in question encompasses most of the relatively uninhabited Appalachian basin, which is located within the Appalachian mountain range. The basin is comprised of sedimentary rocks which stretch from Ontario, Canada all the way down through New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, and New Jersey.

In 1848, James Marshall discovered a single nugget of gold in the American River in California, setting off a massive migration west as hundreds sought to capitalize upon the Gold Rush. Today, a similar situation is playing out. In the late 2000s, new technology enabled workers to extract natural gas from previously inaccessible shale deposits through horizontal hydraulic fracturing. This “shale boom” has had companies racing to capitalize upon the potential of vast natural gas and promises of energy independence and cheap energy. Yet, as the miners during the Gold Rush found upon arriving to California, scientists today are finding that many of the initial claims are not as they seemed. Companies are recklessly continuing, prospecting for natural gas deposits. Hydraulic fracturing is a means of extracting natural gas from deep, previously inaccessible shale deposits. It involves injecting a fracking cocktail mixture of water, sand, and various other chemical fluids into the ground at very high pressures to literally fracture the ground, releasing natural gas that can then be collected. Natural gas is a finite fossil fuel, yet due to the recent fracking boom, many people in the United States have heralded it as the future of America’s energy, the way to energy security.

Wells located in Texas and Oklahoma were the first two Halliburton used hydraulic fracking on in 1949. The Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) “recounts that 332 wells were fracked in the first year alone, with up to 75 percent production increases recorded” (MacRae, “Fracking: A Look Back”). In the 1990 's the Mitchell Energy & Development Corporation began work on a horizontal fracking technique. In this technique the well is first drilled vertically and then drilled horizontally. “About 90 percent of the wells in operation have been fractured – and the process continues to be applied to boost production in unconventional formations – such as tight gas sands and shale deposits” (Shooters – A “Fracking History”).

The overwhelming supply of oil and gas may seem a negative aspect today, but there will come a time when these resources become hard to get again. Through fracking, whatever shortage the world will experience will be resolved. Hydraulic fracturing will also lead to safer ideas of pumping natural gas. Using both fracking and oil drilling, running out of fuel will be out of the picture (“List”). Another benefit behind using hydraulic fracturing is that it has a low energy cost.

Fracking can extract a large amount of resources compared to other methods of exploitation that we used before. Since 2013, production of natural gases in the United States has been climbing rapidly, especially in shale gas. Shale gas has driven U.S production to a record level. In 2010, it is recorded that 1 million of barrels of oil per day are produced. But in 2013, the year with booming application of fracking, the generated barrels of oil per day were tripled, approximating 3 million daily. It could be deduced that more drilling rigs had been installed during the 3-year interval. However, the increase in the number of rigs was not enough in explaining the leap in production of resources. It was the new technique, fracking, that expanded the oil and gas industry in the US. In addition, fracking might be a temporary method to solve the problem of soaring demand for energy. Depletion of resources is posting a great concern for many countries, including the US. Massive U.S industry nowadays is having a huge demand of energy. By using the modern Fracking techniques, oil and gas producers are now able to exploit resources from hard-rock formations deeply under the ground, which they could not do previously. This solidify our hope that by using Fracking, the energy industry of the U.S is no longer suffer from the lack of

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man 's needs, but not every man 's greed.” - Mahatma Gandhi Since the start of the Industrial Revolution the United States of America has been dependent on burning fossil fuels for energy. In 2015 nearly sixty seven percent of energy generated in the United States was from fossil fuels including coal, natural gas, and petroleum. The United States had been aware of a large abundance of natural gas in shale rock formations thousands of feet below the surface; however, when they first found these rocks around 1940 there was no technology or tools advanced enough to drill into these rocks, until the 1970s and 1980s. Companies worked endlessly finding a way to allow shale rocks to release the gas that they held. Companies eventually came up with a practice called hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking; this process utilizes water pressure to fracture or break a rock in order to release and collect fuel such as gas or oil. In recent years, companies have mixed sand, chemicals and other proponents to retrieve the maximum amount of gas that each drilling site has to offer. A heated debate has begun concerning these mixtures and the money involved in fracking. While one side asserts that fracking should be banned because of potential environmental damage produced by the fracking mixtures, others claim that fracking should continue because of potential gains it could provide for the economy in the United States.

Engineering and surveying, construction, hospitality, construction, equipment manufacturing as well as environmental permitting are only a percentage of the professions encountering the positive gradually expanding influences of expanding oil in addition to natural gas shale improvement. Gallegos & Varela asserts that “a few critiques of oil and natural gas generation assert that Hydraulic Fracturing has critical environmental results. The fact of the matter is, while all advancement has challenges, Hydraulic Fracturing innovation has numerous environmental benefits and it is utilized under close supervision by state and government authorities” (26). Studies conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Ground Water Protection Council have affirmed that there is no immediate connection between Hydraulic Fracturing activities and groundwater contamination.

An article on America’s Communities informs its readers how fracturing is supplying about 2.1 million jobs to American citizens. Federal regulations and laws have already been set in place for fracturing in the future. The number of marketing natural gas skyrocketed from 2008 to 2012. In Pennsylvania alone there are 9000 wells and is expected to create 211,000 jobs around 2020. Other states such as Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, North Dakota, Ohio, and Texas are major states where hydraulic fracturing has taken place.