Haynesville Shale: Chesapeake Rig Tour

NATURAL GAS IS MONEY IN THE GROUND TO A GAS COMPANY. IT'S JUST A MATTER OF GETTING TO IT...AND THANKS TO EVER-IMPROVING DRILLING TECHNOLOGY, THEY'RE GETTING TO IT FASTER AND MORE EFFICIENTLY THAN EVER. KSLA NEWS 12'S CAROLYN ROY TAKES US ON A TOUR OF A DRILLING RIG IN ACTION. THE NATURAL GAS TRAPPED DEEP BENEATH THE ARKLATEX IS ABOUT TO TRANSFORM THE LANDSCAPE UP HERE ON THE SURFACE, LITERALLY...THANKS TO RIGS LIKE THESE. "Some of it's supports, a lot of it's lifting". THESE TOWERS OF STEEL, CABLE AND MACHINERY ARE CRITICAL TO THE PROCESS OF PULLING THE PRECIOUS MINERAL FROM AN ANCIENT SHALE FORMATION NEARLY A MILE AND A HALF UNDERGROUND. BORN 300-MILLION YEARS AGO WHEN MOST OF TEXAS AND LOUISIANA WERE COVERED BY A SHALLOW OCEAN. IRELAND the ocean eventually dried up and there were continent shifts over geologic time that eventually covered up what was the bottom of the ocean and is now the shale. SMALL ORGANISMS EMBEDDED IN THE MUD WERE TRAPPED...AND THE MUD HARDENED INTO A TIGHTLY-PACKED LAYER OF ROCK. UNDER HEAT AND PRESSURE.THAT ORGANIC MATERIAL BROKE DOWN INTO METHANE.WHAT WE KNOW AS NATURAL GAS. GEOLOGISTS AND GAS COMPANIES HAVE LONG KNOWN THAT GAS IS TRAPPED IN THE SHALE -- IT'S ONLY RECENTLY THAT TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES HAVE ALLOWED THEM TO GET TO IT. "the technology of everything involved is advanced, making , you know, they could have done this 20 yrs ago, but what we're doing now on an avg of 21 days may have taken them 60 or 70 days". AND HIGHER GAS PRICES HAVE MADE IT ALL WORTHWHILE. "The Barnett shale, 15 years ago, was not a productive zone they couldn't have they couldn't have - they could drill the wells, but they could not economically complete em and get them to produce, and with the evolution of the completion technologies and the change in how they were fracing the wells, we were able to make them more productive and with the advancement of drilling technology we can drill them much quicker, 3:35:44 and although this is high dollar equipment, the faster we drill em, we can drill em more economically now". ADVANCES IN HORIZONTAL DRILLING...SENDS A THICK STEEL PIPE ALONG =INSIDE= THE SHALE INSTEAD OF SIMPLY STRAIGHT DOWN =THROUGH= IT. "doesn't look like it would bend, but it does, when you get out there several thousand feet - it bends". THAT PIPE IS LATER ENCASED IN CONCRETE TO PROTECT DRINKING WATER...AND PERFORATED WITH NUMEROUS SMALL CHARGES, SO THAT IT CAN COLLECT MORE TRAPPED GAS THROUGH A MUCH LARGER SURFACE AREA. DEPENDING ON THE SITE, AS MANY AS 18 WELLS CAN BE DRILLED EACH PAD LOCATION IN THE BARNETT SHALE...USUALLY A TWO-TO-FOUR ACRE AREA....AND EACH HORIZONTAL WELL CAN DRAW GAS FROM UNDERNEATH PROPERTY AS FAR AS A MILE AWAY. BUT THE RIG IS ONLY TEMPORARY. AT THIS COMPLETED SITE IN BURLESON, TEXAS, THERE ARE FOUR WELLHEADS LEFT BEHIND, PRODUCING GAS. MORE WELLS, MORE GAS...MORE MONEY...AND MORE WORK FOR THESE GUYS. "They're out here 24 hrs a day." CHESAPEAKE SAYS EACH RIG BRINGS 187 PERMANENT JOBS......PAYING 22 DOLLARS AN HOUR AND UP. "you can't just bring anybody in and put em up there and say hey we're gonna tread pipe. There's an art to throwin tongs on, it's an art pulling sleds, there's techniques, slips weigh 300lbs you know, 5" slips weigh 300 lbs these probably weigh 200 - and it takes 3 men to do em". NO DOUBT IT'S DIFFICULT. "that's the clean mud goin in, goin down the pipe, comes out the drill bit, carries the cuttings up". AND DIRTY WORK. "there's mixers in these tanks, these tanks here contain all the mud and this system probably has about 12 hundred barrels of mud, a thousand barrels of mud 3:18:08 so there's a total of about a thousand barrels of mud in here that is continuously circulated through". UP ABOVE, ON THE RIG PLATFORM, A PRECISE ROUTINE PLAYS OUT OVER AND OVER. "we track it every thirty feet, so we know every thirty feet where we're at in the hole". SENDING PIPES EVER DEEPER INTO THE EARTH. "we're at 45 hundred feet (will have to cover very beginning of this sot bc of movement) going to 10,700". ALL TO HARVEST THE BOUNTY FROM BELOW

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• KSLA
• Carolyn
• Roy
• Barnett
• Haynesville
• Shale
• Chesapeake
• Rig
• Tour
• Derrick
• Natural
• Gas
• Well
• Drilling
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[efsane1976]

bu ne Len aq bunu ne die komuşunuz

[ziocody]

I was unable to translate this, is it Turkish? "Only what not aq we can neither die komuşunuz?!?"

[ozarknature]

Time to shut down the frackers!

[OilfieldCotton]

@dmanfan420 I am a driller and I make $24 a hour...where do you get your facts from....I, along with my fellow roughnecks, make the world go round....yeah you're welcome....

[bryan760]

@dmanfan420 I am so glad to see your comment. Frac'ing needs to be made illegal, as well as drilling under private property. We are paying a high cost in the USA for the greed of the Nat Gas and Oil companies. The reserves they claim come at too high a cost of life, property, and natural resources. Fortunately this is at the forefront of the news lately, but we are not doing enough to make our government change these practices.

[dmanfan420]

FUCK YOU CHESAPEAKE -you're destroying Pennsylvania's land and water now too. So safe that you changed the rules in 2005 so you have no liability. An average driller gets $22 per hour to fuck up all our water. I wish I could get that much money do fuck up the top CEO of Chesapeake's drinking water supply. Wonder where that comes from!!!! Go die assholes.

[RozarSmacco]

@beaman220 Then there are several thousand more TCF of nat gas tied up in Hydrates in the artic regions. That means energy in ice which is fairly easy to release and capture. That means there's several more 1000s of tcf of nat gas right there. And if that ever runs out then you can tap the moon of Saturn called Titan...it is a whole moon covered in methane!!! you just have to travel 800,000,000 miles to get it. I know this stuff...I wrote a paper on it for the society of petroleum engineers

[RozarSmacco]

@beaman220 despite media reports...oil and gas aren't going to run out for thousands!!! of years. If you say "we are running out of oil" people will listen to you and you get attention. If you say "we are just fine everything's ok" then no one will listen to you and your personal line of BS. Russia ALONE has 1000s of TCF's ...that means 1000 of 1000s of Billions of standard cubic feet of clearn burning! natural gas energy. STOP worrying everythings ok.

[beaman220]

Man its gonna suck when that shit runs out.