Oil And Gas Investor Brookshire Salt Dome
There has never been a better time to invest money in oil. The United States is experiencing a boom in shale oil and gas exploration and production. In fact, thanks to rich reserves of oil and gas held deep within fine-grained shale rock formations, the United States has gone from being a net importer of oil to the top oil producer, ahead even of Russia and Saudi Arabia. Being an oil and gas investor Brookshire Salt Dome would have already paid off. So far, ten million barrels of oil have been extracted.
New technologies in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have made it possible to access vast stores of fossil fuels that were previously unavailable. Coaxing the black sticky stuff and the lighter gas fractions of liquid petroleum requires a different approach from drilling a conventional oil well. First, fluids are injected thousands of feet into the Earth's crust via perforations in horizontal pipelines.
A mixture of sand, water and a handful of chemicals are then injected into the well to keep the fractures open, allowing the trapped gas and oil to flow through the pipe to the surface. A single frac project can require as much as tens of millions of gallons of frac water. Multiply that by an anticipated tens of thousands of fracking projects and the volume of water is nothing short of astounding.
High volume frac water management involves developing new skills and technologies, all of which require investment and all of which are expected to pay nice returns. Once the fracturing process is complete, all the water that went into the ground must come out of the ground. Added to that is something called "produced water." This is water that was already present within the rock beneath the Earth's surface.
Produced water can amount to as much as eight times the volume of water that is injected into the rock to induce fracturing. Some of this used water is placed into specially constructed rapid evaporation tanks to minimize the volume that has to be piped or trucked from the site to its final destination to be recycled or disposed of. Some of it is treated and recycled to be reused again in another fracking project.
What cannot be disposed of in one of these means is injected into disposal wells. It is this "produced" water injected into the disposal wells, and not the fracturing process, that has people understandably concerned about the generation of earthquakes. Scientists at the US Geological Survey in Pasadena have been studying what are colloquially known as "frackquakes" in Oklahoma.
The Survey has confirmed that there is a close temporal relationship between the injection of water into disposal wells and the occurrence of these frackquakes. The public is also understandably worried about another, separate, problem with hydraulic fracturing. This is the potential for contamination of public water supplies with mud, sand and toxic fracking chemicals.
Oil and gas investor Brookshire Salt Dome and other productive shale formations have been of huge benefit to the country. The continental United States are sitting on enough fuel to comfortably supply our needs for the next 90 years. Side benefits will be the development of new frac water management and recycling technologies which will be beneficial in their own right.
New technologies in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have made it possible to access vast stores of fossil fuels that were previously unavailable. Coaxing the black sticky stuff and the lighter gas fractions of liquid petroleum requires a different approach from drilling a conventional oil well. First, fluids are injected thousands of feet into the Earth's crust via perforations in horizontal pipelines.
A mixture of sand, water and a handful of chemicals are then injected into the well to keep the fractures open, allowing the trapped gas and oil to flow through the pipe to the surface. A single frac project can require as much as tens of millions of gallons of frac water. Multiply that by an anticipated tens of thousands of fracking projects and the volume of water is nothing short of astounding.
High volume frac water management involves developing new skills and technologies, all of which require investment and all of which are expected to pay nice returns. Once the fracturing process is complete, all the water that went into the ground must come out of the ground. Added to that is something called "produced water." This is water that was already present within the rock beneath the Earth's surface.
Produced water can amount to as much as eight times the volume of water that is injected into the rock to induce fracturing. Some of this used water is placed into specially constructed rapid evaporation tanks to minimize the volume that has to be piped or trucked from the site to its final destination to be recycled or disposed of. Some of it is treated and recycled to be reused again in another fracking project.
What cannot be disposed of in one of these means is injected into disposal wells. It is this "produced" water injected into the disposal wells, and not the fracturing process, that has people understandably concerned about the generation of earthquakes. Scientists at the US Geological Survey in Pasadena have been studying what are colloquially known as "frackquakes" in Oklahoma.
The Survey has confirmed that there is a close temporal relationship between the injection of water into disposal wells and the occurrence of these frackquakes. The public is also understandably worried about another, separate, problem with hydraulic fracturing. This is the potential for contamination of public water supplies with mud, sand and toxic fracking chemicals.
Oil and gas investor Brookshire Salt Dome and other productive shale formations have been of huge benefit to the country. The continental United States are sitting on enough fuel to comfortably supply our needs for the next 90 years. Side benefits will be the development of new frac water management and recycling technologies which will be beneficial in their own right.
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