The college I work for has invested in several funds that specialize in Hydraulic Fracturing, or “Fraking,” in order to produce natural gas and oil. I recently got the opportunity to visit a drilling site, a frak job, and a gas separator plant. They spent the whole day explaining the process and I have to say, my mind was fuzzy with new information. It was incredibly interesting. Below are some pictures and some short explanations of how the process works.
The image above is one of the drill bits used in the process. They have different drill bits depending on the depth and materials they are attempting to drill through. The one pictured here has diamonds imbedded in those circular teeth you are seeing. These drill bits are recycled as long as they don’t ruin them. They said they are good for about several hundred to a 1000 feet of drilling before they need to be changed out. The whole rig pictured below can drill up to a 1000 feet a day and runs 24 hours 7 days a week with a crew of about 6 with some additional onsite help. They work 12 hours a day for seven days and then get a week off. They also switch off between night and day shifts. There is onsite housing for those who would like to stick around. I asked what these guys get paid and they said about 60,000 base, but they can also volunteer for other shifts moving that up in to the 80 – 120k area for really ambitious people.
These rigs use what is called horizontal drilling. They drill massive under ground “U”s so that one side of the U is horizontal through the shale deposit that they are looking to mine. A couple interesting things that they mentioned were that there was no artificial pressure placed on the drill bit and that gravity and the turning of the bit is what digs the wells. Also they have a whole process on how they drill through the water table. They drill to a certain depth past the water table and then put in the steel casings to line the well and fill the spacing around it with about 3 inches of cement. They then pressure test this and have to have it certified before they can continue on. The well I visited was in Texas and they seemed like they had some pretty good regulations in place around this drilling. Given that all of the water in the area comes from ground water and there are literally hundreds of wells around they must have the process down tight.
Here is an image of them explaining to all of the dorky investors how all of this works. I thought it was funny how none of us quite filled out our jump suits like the rig hands did. Desk jobs don’t quite build muscle like hauling tons of metal around does.
The drilling rig will end up drilling 4 – 16 wells on a site and then move off. Each well is from 4000 – 7000 feet in total length (both vertical and horizontal length). They said this covers about 20 – 80 acres of shale deposits in the surrounding land. After the drilling is complete they do a Hydraulic Fracturing of the shale deposits. This was the most interesting part to me. What they do is send down shaped charges (invented and used by the military for armor piercing) on what they call a “gun” (which in the past actually shot bullets into the shale!). They set these off in increments blowing small holes up to 30 inches into the surrounding shale deposits. They then hook up the machinery that you see above. Which consists of 10 2500 horse power diesel engines (or 25,000 horse power!). They pump thousands of gallons of water and sand down (along with other chemicals mainly used to prevent corrosion) the well at 5000psi. Their goal is to “shatter” the shale deposit at up 200 – 400 feet beyond the well. The sand gets embedded deep in the cracks and keeps them pried open to allow the gas and other hydrocarbons to flow back out. One “fraking” supposedly does the trick and that well will produce for up to 40 years!
From that wel,l the gas is collected in a network of pipelines that have been laid by “mid-stream” companies. These companies collect and process the gas for sale. Above is a picture of these companies newest plants that can handle 210million cubic feet of natural gas per day. All of this complicated machinery basically heats and cools the gas in order to separate it into its constituents. Off to the left in the big building are three huge turbines that pull in the gas and power the station. We needed to wear ear plugs while we walked around.
In the middle of all of this is the device above. This thing spins at something like 12,000 RPM, bringing the gas in and lowering the pressure so quickly that the temperature drops to -170 degrees! What you are seeing is a six inch layer of ice surrounding it, and this on 100+ degree day. Needless to say it was nice to place our hands on it after being in those jump suits.
Hydraulic fracturing has begun to get a bad reputation. The movie “Gas Lands” portrays it as terrible danger to our environment. I have seen some debunking of that movie, but I am also sure that there have been mistakes made and people who could care less about the damage they do. This is one of those rare occasions where I see thoughtful regulation as a good thing for everyone. Texas seems to have their act together on this front, and I’m sure that’s from over a hundred years of drilling in the state. Even with gas prices at depressed levels given the huge volumes being produced from these methods, these are still profitable ventures (very profitable!). They also provide relatively low skill jobs and very good wages. From a political perspective, they reduce our dependence on nations that use their resources to keep their people in bondage, and from an environmental perspective it provides a lower carbon fuel to power our economy. This is one of those rare things that provides solutions to so many problems, and has so little down side (if properly regulated) that we should be celebrating it. But of course there is always somebody out there trying their very hardest to find fault.
