Tag "Directional drilling"
Horizontal drilling comes to the UK, but fracking must wait
Pioneering driller Cuadrilla is optimistic over shale gas well prospects Cuadrilla Resources says it has moved closer towards launching the UK’s first major fracking project by drilling the country’s first ever horizontal shale gas well at its Preston New Road site in Lancashire, north-west England.
However, the company is optimistic that it will be cleared to frack in the near future, both in this well and another it plans to drill now.
The company, which says it has permission to drill four wells in all on the site, has drilled its first horizontal well through the Lower Bowland shale at a depth of some 2,700 metres below ground. “We plan to be in a position to hydraulically fracture both horizontal wells one and two in Q3 this year,” it said, adding that gas could be flowing into the local grid by 2019.
There is improved confidence among UK shale gas companies that the tide may be turning in their favour, despite vociferous opposition to lifting the fracking ban which has prompted thus-far unsuccessful legal challenges.
Planning permission for the Preston New Road site was refused by the local council in 2015, but that decision was overturned by the government in 2016.
Other small firms are also hoping to drill in England if fracking gets approval.
Opponents embarked on intensified protests outside the company’s site this month and have the support of environmental groups.
Greenpeace UK’s chief scientist Doug Parr said in a statement: “Just as Bloomberg reveal that solar plants have dropped in cost by 20% in the last 12 months, Cuadrilla announces that seven years after the last UK well was fracked, they are almost ready to have another go, notwithstanding local opposition, pending government permission, sometime in the summer, maybe.
Though the government may see the benefits of giving the shale gas firms an opportunity to establish whether they really can produce commercial quantities of gas, it will also be mindful that signing off on further fossil fuel drilling while trying to increase the proportion of clean energy to meet climate change goals could be a tough sell.
Of Course Fracking Is Safe, Stanford Prof Says
“We did it because there were so many important and obvious environmental benefits to the utilization of natural gas,” Zoback said. “So it’s somewhat ironic to be asked to argue for the notion that these benefits outweigh the environmental costs, when it’s the environmental benefits that got me into this business in the first place.”
Zoback argued that natural gas can replace coal and “dirty diesel” at significant scale throughout the world, supporting economic growth while slashing carbon emissions.
(When burned, natural gas emits about half the CO2 that coal does).
It is not the end; it is a means to get to a decarbonized energy world.”
And when properly regulated, he added, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is safe for the environment, as demonstrated by the 250,000 fracked wells already operating in the U.S. “The assertion that this caused or will soon cause severe environmental damage is simply not true and needlessly alarmist.
Through emphasizing best practice, appropriate regulation, and enforcement of those regulations, I have every confidence that horizontal drilling and multi-stage fracturing can be done with minimal environmental impact.”
Lena Moffitt of the Sierra Club said the 15 million Americans who live near fracking rigs have had a different experience of the impact of those 250,000 fracked wells. “Burning fossil fuels inevitably leads to chaos,” she said, one way or another: “I agree with my opponent that the basic facts and truth matter and are what’s important,” she said, “and the basic fact is that burning fossil fuels is fundamentally changing our planet in a way that threatens the continued existence of humanity .”
Watch the debate, hosted Friday by the Stanford Precourt Institute For Energy: By Jeff McMahon, based in Chicago.
Of Course Fracking Is Safe, Stanford Prof Says
“We did it because there were so many important and obvious environmental benefits to the utilization of natural gas,” Zoback said. “So it’s somewhat ironic to be asked to argue for the notion that these benefits outweigh the environmental costs, when it’s the environmental benefits that got me into this business in the first place.”
Zoback argued that natural gas can replace coal and “dirty diesel” at significant scale throughout the world, supporting economic growth while slashing carbon emissions.
(When burned, natural gas emits about half the CO2 that coal does).
It is not the end; it is a means to get to a decarbonized energy world.”
And when properly regulated, he added, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is safe for the environment, as demonstrated by the 250,000 fracked wells already operating in the U.S. “The assertion that this caused or will soon cause severe environmental damage is simply not true and needlessly alarmist.
Through emphasizing best practice, appropriate regulation, and enforcement of those regulations, I have every confidence that horizontal drilling and multi-stage fracturing can be done with minimal environmental impact.”
Lena Moffitt of the Sierra Club said the 15 million Americans who live near fracking rigs have had a different experience of the impact of those 250,000 fracked wells. “Burning fossil fuels inevitably leads to chaos,” she said, one way or another: “I agree with my opponent that the basic facts and truth matter and are what’s important,” she said, “and the basic fact is that burning fossil fuels is fundamentally changing our planet in a way that threatens the continued existence of humanity .”
Watch the debate, hosted Friday by the Stanford Precourt Institute For Energy: By Jeff McMahon, based in Chicago.
Anti-Fracking Elitists: Rural America Should Remain Economically Stagnant
Author: James Taylor / Source: Forbes Anti-fracking activists are resorting to a curious line of argument in their zeal to ban natural
Fracking legal in New York? Yes, with LPG
Source: American Agriculturist Law student discovers LPG fracking of Marcellus shale gas wells is legal in New York state, even
The Cycle, Not Automation, Is Keeping Oil & Gas Hiring Down
Source: Forbes Metal Price Collapse And China Exodus Push Mongolia To A Risky Economic Brink By MARK AGERTON Despite recent
Bet You’d Be Shocked by How Much of Our Natural Gas Comes From Fracking
Author: Jason Hall / Source: The Motley Fool While crude oil dominates the energy news, natural gas is one of the most
‘Forced pooling’: Erie residents wary of controversial fracking practice
Rooted in old statute, the law essentially gives the power of condemnation to an oil and gas company, attorney says Jeremy Papasso / Daily Camera) Residents in Erie’s Old Town are facing down a fracking order that harkens back to the early days of the oil boom, a controversial pooling born out of statutes used to force through horizontal drilling.
The letters — from Denver-based Crestone Peak Resources — indicate the company’s intent to pool dozens of properties within the town’s most densely populated district to lease their mineral rights.
The concept is known as statutory, or compulsory, pooling — or “forced pooling,” as many have come to refer to it — and delineates a practice that oil and gas companies can use to serve their horizontal drilling needs.
The concept of forced pooling is almost as obscure as it is old — rooted in a statute reaching back more than a hundred years.
It gave way to the concept of “forced pooling,” which enabled oil and gas companies the right to access underground minerals even when they didn’t own them or acquire the rights to lease them. “Oil and gas companies only need one person to agree to lease their minerals along a mile long bore that they’re drilling sideways,” Colorado Sen. Matt Jones said, “and they can ask the commission to basically condemn all the other mineral right owners along that bore.”
Even for many in Erie who support the oil and gas industry, such as David Lotten, the concept of forced pooling has irked many.
Like many in Erie, Lotten leased his mineral rights over to Encana several years ago when he purchased his home, a deal he has come to regret.
As Erie residents brace for the pooling order, their neighbors in Lafayette and the county as a whole are in the midst of their own oil and gas battle.
Erie residents received the letters just weeks after Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman filed a lawsuit against Boulder County for its current moratorium on new fracking applications.
