Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by jim weyland on April 6, 2014 at 11:59

the nla area is blessed with more than adequate water.

but, in many other parts of the country, things ain't so. as mark twain said many years ago about the west, there, whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over.

the save the sand fleas types are doing everything they can to shutdown the business by propagating outright lies and spinning some pretty good misinformation inre: fracking.

imo, it makes a whole lot of sense to get on the side of the angels and support/encourage the emerging technologies of recycling frack water.

besides, it just makes good sense to do so. after all, we're merely stewards of things today for the ensuing generations.

note: i have no financial interest in the matter. to me, provided that in the big picture that its economic, its just the right thing to do.

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Permalink Reply by Hopeful About Natural Gas on April 6, 2014 at 19:06

Glad you posted this. Water is irreplaceable for us human beings. I'm also interested in propane fracking and any other alternative that makes long term sense. There may be many places with lots of gas but little water. Propane is the only other alternative I know of right now. Anyone else know of anything else being tried???

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Permalink Reply by JMan on April 7, 2014 at 2:40

Range resources has successfully fracced with air in West Virginia.  Regarding propane, it is very risky and every company I know doesn't want to risk blowing everything up!  

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Permalink Reply by jim weyland on April 7, 2014 at 7:00

i'm told that back in the day, they'd drop a little bottle of nitroglycerin down the well bore to frack the well.

i know whose job i wouldn't have wanted to have.

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Permalink Reply by Two Dogs, Pirate on April 7, 2014 at 14:27

What is the difference when you got propane down hole and propane being pumped in? It seems to me that the oxygen in air would be a greater risk for blowing things up because generally you have to have fuel and oxygen for an explosion to happen. Can you breath underground?

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Permalink Reply by Max on April 8, 2014 at 1:27

"generally you have to have fuel and oxygen for an explosion to happen".

and a spark/heat.

I would think that propane would be too expensive.  Water is a lot cheaper and doesn't explode, unless it's coming out a faucet in an anti-fracking propaganda video.

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Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on April 8, 2014 at 1:30

LOL!  Good one, Max!

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Permalink Reply by tc on April 8, 2014 at 1:59

"Water is a lot cheaper"

Not true in many parts of the world.  A lot of this technology is not meant for the US, but for the rest of the world.  For example China has very little fresh water compared to the number of people who live there, and its a sad fact that a worker's life is worth less than the millions of gallons of water needed to frac wells.

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Permalink Reply by Max on April 8, 2014 at 5:43

tc, you're correct to point out that water is not cheaper in some parts of the world.  The island nation Aruba depends on sea water to produce their potable water and making the ocean drinkable is not cheap (unless you have cheap NG).

China's water woe's have influenced China's populations for centuries now, and with modern tech, they're trying to change their old foe into something we all do, use things blindly until we have no more, then say, "damn, we shouldn't have done that". 

China's population divided by anything is going to be higher than anywhere, except maybe India. That population takes a lot of water.  It's a good thing they don't use as much as we do for each person, but their use is increasing at an alarming rate, they have a lot to work out as they progress past the mistakes they made this last century.

I would think that unless you had your own source of propane, the use of propane would not be feasible on wide-scale fracking.  How many million's of gallon's would it take to frack a well?  Propane is lighter than water, 4.2 pounds/gal, but a gallon of fluid is a gallon, no mater what's filling that gallon.  Propane is running a little less than $4.00/gal., they use somewhere around 2-3 million gallons.  I know one well that was fracked and the water  cost around $60K, not including transport/pump/pipeline expense.  The propane cost would include some of that expense, but how much?

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Permalink Reply by JMan on April 8, 2014 at 2:20

They claim they get all the propane back and reuse it. My question is (nobody can seem to answer it) is how can they determine if they are getting back the propane they pumped in or if they are just getting back gas from the formation?

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Permalink Reply by Max on April 8, 2014 at 5:05

JMan, as I understand it, each area that produces hydrocarbons has different trace elements contained in that formation, and although propane is pure enough for us to call it propane, it still contains trace elements/molecules.  Those can be traced back to the original source.

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Permalink Reply by JMan on April 8, 2014 at 5:15

makes sense.  If people are wanting to look more into it, Blackbrush has been using propane fracs for some time now in South Texas.  Search for it on Google for further info.

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