Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Robert Duke on December 14, 2010 at 14:39

This is a pure hatchet job.  Maybe punching a natural gas well complete with hydraulic fracturing does not translate that well into a do-it-yourself-in-your-back-yard project? (might work for some of you all; I just don't have the equipment or location).  So much for the objectivity of Popular Mechanics.

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Permalink Reply by essay on December 14, 2010 at 14:53

they still do decent articles every now and then, but i canceled my sub like 5 years ago.  suffice to say since i started reading it in high school i feel like the quality of their reportage has greatly diminished and i can get better information on the open 'net.

 

seems to me that there is more truth in the replies to the article than the article itself.

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Permalink Reply by Joe Hahn on December 15, 2010 at 2:30

I tend to believe there is alot more to it than most of us really want to accept.

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Permalink Reply by essay on December 15, 2010 at 6:24

a lot more to what, friend?  are you suggesting that we are all ignorant and ill informed?

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Permalink Reply by Clyde T. Williams on December 16, 2010 at 8:01

I don't think he was suggesting ignorance or ill-informed...

However, I believe any one in oil patch can remember 30-50 years ago when oil was spilled alot more than now...and in exploration and production things get a little sloppy for some...although I don't think as bad now as portrayed in "There will be blood".  BUT

and there are always buts...extreme/cutting-edge commercial production in E&P can and has gone wrong in many cases...BP/GoM. 

 

Smaller E&P companies cut alot more corners than others and spill/release alot more and may be pressured to not check seals and cement bonds as much as larger companies...especially when dealing with known or even unknown abandoned wells, faults/fractures and remember that the tight shales may be the very "caps" more other better gas and oil plays...Fracing is complicated and uses very high pressure = formation fracturing pressures (>10,000psi) so a little weakness can result in loss of fluids and gas to the overlying formations and even rising to the freshwater aquifers and surface...

 

In California our fields are over 90 years old, are fault traps usually and are like swiss cheese and leak like a sponge so fracking has to be very careful...and remeber where the wfirst commercial oil was found - <500ft = Pennsylvania

 

As in all articles some is true or facts and some may not be...

The Web has alot more than the PM article if you want...it is kind of depressing..

 

Tom

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Permalink Reply by essay on December 16, 2010 at 16:13

yeah there's a lot on the net, mr california.  there is damn well nothing extreme or cutting edge about a technology that has been used over a million times in the last sixty years.

 

so he wasn't suggesting it, but you figured you would go ahead and suggest it, after referencing hollywood movies and the bp spill?

 

classic.

 

 

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