Oklahoma Earthquake Politics

[DrinkYourMilkshake]

Hunton is an O&G production project though and it is believed to be the cause of the 2011 quake.
Semantics, smoke and mirrors, obfuscation...
You're not winning us over with that.

You got me buddy. Too smart for me. I'll admit it's all smoke and mirrors. My whole goal here is to deceive. Cause I am completely NOT the type of guy who really doesn't give two flips about you, your family or your land as long as I am making my paycheck. Has nothing to do with educating people so they don't say ignorant, or in some cases, stupid things.

P.S. Thanks for referencing the Hunton play. Totally put me in my place and completely proves me wrong when I referenced an Earthquake swarm that had absolutely NOTHING to do with hydraulic fracturing...

*cough*

*cough*

Smile

 

[Hobbes]

You got me buddy. Too smart for me. I'll admit it's all smoke and mirrors. My whole goal here is to deceive. Cause I am completely NOT the type of guy who really doesn't give two flips about you, your family or your land as long as I am making my paycheck. Has nothing to do with educating people so they don't say ignorant, or in some cases, stupid things.

P.S. Thanks for referencing the Hunton play. Totally put me in my place and completely proves me wrong when I referenced an Earthquake swarm that had absolutely NOTHING to do with hydraulic fracturing...

*cough*

*cough*

Smile

You're welcome!

 

[okietool]

Hunton is an O&G production project though and it is believed to be the cause of the 2011 quake.
Semantics, smoke and mirrors, obfuscation...
You're not winning us over with that.

Since you summarily reject any offered remedy out of hand, Financial anyway, it leaves me to assume all you will be satisfied with is a blanket acceptance from everyone that involved in the oil industry that we are all guilty. Does it include the kid at O'Reilly's who sell you Pennzoil?
I think the OP (you) originally had a fire in your belly over a meeting between David Bore and "oil executives", naming Harold Hamm ( a man with plenty of adverse publicity mainly about his failed marriage) ( is there a complete list of the executives? are they all Sandridge?) and then Jack Stark of Continental.
Then Holland wrote a paper pointing at lake levels then later "Holland replied that he was "quite skeptical myself" of such a link". Who intimidated him in to saying he was skeptical about his own published article? If he was intimidated by Hamm, Stark, The OCC and Boren is that on them or him?

"Under the OGS seal, it said "activities such as wastewater disposal" may be a "contributing factor to the increase in earthquakes.""

If in a CEO position, I might want to talk to the guy too, it's hard to ask and article or a publication a direct question.

Did Hamm and Stark's position in the industry get them privilege, surely. I never saw anything where Holland claimed he was intimidated, if he's the expert he shouldn't be. But you can't account for personalities and human nature. In defense of Holland, any time some one calls you and questions your about your findings it could be intimidating, especially by someone who has access to geologists and geophysicists, who may or may not agree with your findings. On the flip side, how many "Joe the Plumbers" would get in to see Holland?
If the OGS and USGS work anything like the BLM you have to make an appointment which may or may not be accepted.

As a side question, (I don't doubt there are earthquakes), is there any data on the change in elevation or orientation compared to surrounding fault blocks?

As far as winning you over, you're pretty invested in your opinion, I'm not expecting for you to show the Oil Patch much love.

As far as the science, the best I've seen is we think it may be doing it, and honestly that may be all we ever see from credible sources.

I can't speak for Hamm or Stark, but a well head tax wouldn't cost the Oil Companies, who, if they did follow all applicable rules and regulations, I don't think they deserve to be fined. We (everyone) did not know what we did not know. If there was willful negligence, yes fine them, sue them. I'll vote for it.

And BP violated their APD and COA so yes they were liable and deserved to be fined.

I can tell you from personal experience, you will get a fine from one BLM inspector on something a different inspectors says isn't in violation. My company pays the fine and just makes changes to every operation to reflect the problem.

This may actually accelerate the use of natural gas fracing, No disposal, your flow back would run through a separator and then to sales.

 

[Hobbes]

If he was intimidated by Hamm, Stark, The OCC and Boren is that on them or him?

That is a good question.

 

[okietool]

In all fairness to Holland, powerful people usually have powerful personalities and can be intimidating, I would assume Hamm to be such a personality.

 

[okietool]

Here's some other thoughts (off topic).
I think DrinkYourMilkShake stated exploration companies don't want to use the water.
Water is not free.
Disposal is not free.
Trucking is not free.
You can only reuse frac water so many times. It picks up water soluble clays, salt, etc. during the frac process. Clays and formation water from different zones don't always like each other. The results can be interesting. (From a distance).
You can only filter and centrifuge so much out (and then you have solids to dispose of).
Then you have to distill it to reuse it..."THAT'S WHAT YOU SHOULD DO" you say.
My company does. It raises the cost of the water from about $1.50 to $2.10 per barrel (for just the water, no trucking, no piping). It's not cost effective. (Yet). We were still doing it.
Oil price drops, one of the first expenses dropped, the development of the distillery.
There have to be numbers somewhere showing how much produced water is put in disposals and injection wells. I can't find them. I'm sure there's also numbers for frac water disposal.
I'd like to see a soil farming experiment, that might require a different frac blend, but then the water could be useful.
We're putting covers on frac pits to slow evaporation.

We don't want to spend the money, but so far there's nothing more cost effective.

Even if there's going to be liabilities involved, I don't see oil and gas exploration companies being able to get away from water intensive fracs. It may cause there to be really stinky frac water pits around, it may me it gets trucked out of state. It may just involve a more judicious placement of disposal wells.

If the frac job itself is causing the earthquakes, shouldn't there be some sheared casing strings in the laterals? My son is one of the people that specialize in stuff like repairing parted casing, he's not seeing it.
Royalty owners should be able to tell by drops in production and the checks generated by the production. On the royalty checks I paid attention to, there are production volumes.


And now you know how convoluted my thought process is.

 

[Shadowrider]

Here's some other thoughts (off topic).
I think DrinkYourMilkShake stated exploration companies don't want to use the water.
Water is not free.
Disposal is not free.
Trucking is not free.
You can only reuse frac water so many times. It picks up water soluble clays, salt, etc. during the frac process. Clays and formation water from different zones don't always like each other. The results can be interesting. (From a distance).
You can only filter and centrifuge so much out (and then you have solids to dispose of).
Then you have to distill it to reuse it..."THAT'S WHAT YOU SHOULD DO" you say.
My company does. It raises the cost of the water from about $1.50 to $2.10 per barrel (for just the water, no trucking, no piping). It's not cost effective. (Yet). We were still doing it.
Oil price drops, one of the first expenses dropped, the development of the distillery.
There have to be numbers somewhere showing how much produced water is put in disposals and injection wells. I can't find them. I'm sure there's also numbers for frac water disposal.
I'd like to see a soil farming experiment, that might require a different frac blend, but then the water could be useful.
We're putting covers on frac pits to slow evaporation.

We don't want to spend the money, but so far there's nothing more cost effective.

Even if there's going to be liabilities involved, I don't see oil and gas exploration companies being able to get away from water intensive fracs. It may cause there to be really stinky frac water pits around, it may me it gets trucked out of state. It may just involve a more judicious placement of disposal wells.

If the frac job itself is causing the earthquakes, shouldn't there be some sheared casing strings in the laterals? My son is one of the people that specialize in stuff like repairing parted casing, he's not seeing it.
Royalty owners should be able to tell by drops in production and the checks generated by the production. On the royalty checks I paid attention to, there are production volumes.


And now you know how convoluted my thought process is.

I'd really be interested in how they are distilling it. I would think that vacuum distillation would be the best way, but still far and away too expensive to do in the quantities you are talking. I'm frankly shocked that they are doing it because of the cost. That's a ton of money even for big oil!

 

[okietool]

I'd really be interested in how they are distilling it. I would think that vacuum distillation would be the best way, but still far and away too expensive to do in the quantities you are talking. I'm frankly shocked that they are doing it because of the cost. That's a ton of money even for big oil!

Heat. And that's why it's not cost effective. We can't handle the quantities we need. My company is really kind of small oil. Maybe small medium.
The heat we can supply (produced gas), but the scale isn't there. And we still have to centrifuge and filter it before hand. Pump costs, labor, etc. make it a little costly now. But it has possibilities.
The cost difference really is about what I posted.
Our goal is to eliminate buying water by using produced water or distilling water.
One point of clarification: we are distilling produced water.
But if we can make that cost effective, I don't see any reason we couldn't distill used frac water. It might actually be cheaper since you start with fresh water vs brine (the produced water here weighs in about 9.5 ppg vs 8.34 for fresh water). The extra 1.16# is salt. Plus we have a delivery piping system in place to the distillery because there's also a produced water disposal well there.

 

[Shadowrider]

That's allota salt.

I figured they were using the heat off of the process somewhere. The unit I ran was really two identical ones on one pad. We were using it for wastewater treatment for removing chromic acid (chromium trioxide, otherwise known as hexavalent chrome. The bad stuff). I could boil the piss out of 85 degree solution water. They are doing it right by filtering and centrifuging it first. The distillate should be about as pure as you can get.

The chemistry and the equipment I had didn't require any filtering because it was all soluble metals and it wouldn't have done a thing. The condenser and evaporator coils were inconel so we didn't even have to adjust pH. Just put it in and clean water came out, but I did have to adjust the pH up afterwards, but there were no metals at all. I could do 1500 gallons in an 8 hour shift off of only one side and each side had a large vacuum pump and a V4 multistage refrigeration compressor running on 480V 3phase. I'd hate to see the electric bill on that beast.

 

[DrinkYourMilkshake]

Heat. And that's why it's not cost effective. We can't handle the quantities we need. My company is really kind of small oil. Maybe small medium.
The heat we can supply (produced gas), but the scale isn't there. And we still have to centrifuge and filter it before hand. Pump costs, labor, etc. make it a little costly now. But it has possibilities.
The cost difference really is about what I posted.
Our goal is to eliminate buying water by using produced water or distilling water.
One point of clarification: we are distilling produced water.
But if we can make that cost effective, I don't see any reason we couldn't distill used frac water. It might actually be cheaper since you start with fresh water vs brine (the produced water here weighs in about 9.5 ppg vs 8.34 for fresh water). The extra 1.16# is salt. Plus we have a delivery piping system in place to the distillery because there's also a produced water disposal well there.

Are they only distilling relatively clean formation water? Are they doing something other than distillation to remove NORMs? Not being critical, just inquisitive. I enjoy hearing about any company, producer, service company or otherwise, that are out there doing the job better.

There is already people recycling water from fracturing and it comes out more cost effective than purchase and disposal costs combined.