Super Frackin' Gasolicious Extra Oiliosis!

...oil services companies including Baker Hughes (BHI) and Schlumberger (SLB) are continuing their quest to devise ways to create longer, deeper cracks in the earth to release more oil and gas. These companies are no longer content to frack—they want to super frack.

High crude prices and newly accessible oil and gas embedded in shale rock in North America are driving the wave of innovation. The more thoroughly that petroleum-saturated rock is cracked, the more oil and gas is freed to flow from each well, raising the efficiency—and profit—of the expensive process. For example, the growing use of movable sleeves, a tubelike device with holes that fits inside a well bore, lets drillers target multiple spots to dislodge entrapped oil. This technique can reduce the $2.5 million startup cost of a fracking well near the Canadian border by up to two-thirds, according to a recent analysis by JPMorgan Chase (JPM). Multiply such savings by hundreds of wells added in that area each year, and you start to understand why the industry is so eager to hone the process. “I want to crack the rock across as much of the reservoir as I can,” says David A. Pursell, a former fracking engineer who’s now an analyst at Tudor Pickering Holt in Houston. “That’s the Holy Grail.” _BW

The combined technologies of horizontal drilling and advanced fracking have changed the global energy balance. If you have not noticed any difference yet, it is only because it takes time for some revolutions to set in and shift the action schemes and frames that make up the foundations of our world.

Of course the dieoff.orgiasts of the leftist Luddite Green coalition are not going to take all of this laying down. If they cannot come up with rational reasons why these technologies should not be used, they will take the underhanded pathway of government edict. While Obama is king, nothing must stand in the way of energy starvation and the economic crippling of the foci of Mr. Obama's grand strategy of adjusting the scales. Hence, Mr. Obama's EPA is working diligently to find ways to hamper fracking and shale gas & oil production -- perhaps the only bright economic spot in Mr. Obama's entire presidency.

Meanwhile, fracking -- and now super-fracking -- is likely to proceed with all due haste.

Three Faces of Super-Fracking

The “super fracking” as its becoming named is based on three basic improvements. The first is Schlumberger’s “HIWAY” idea that is an innovation in the material forced into the rock. (The linked page has a good animation to explain the process in detail.) The new idea is to add fibers to the mix of hard small grains used to hold open the cracks. The fiber is being seen as a major production improver. Much more flow for a longer period is the result.

...The second idea called “RapidFrac” comes from Halliburton with a set of highly developed specialized pipe fittings that go into a newly drill hole. (This page also has a high quality animated video, though quite a large file.) Much like valves, these sections of the pipe when activated open passages to the rock.

...The third idea is Baker Hughes has developed disintegrating frack balls (No company info yet.). This solves the need to have a drilling rig return to the well, and spend several days drilling and fishing out the perhaps a many as 20 or even 30 balls dropped in to do the frack in stages. _BrianWestenhaus

Halliburton (via NewEnergyandFuel)

Schlumberger (via NewEnergyandFuel)

Baker-Hughes PDF (via New Energy and Fuel)

Brian Wang has more