Hydraulic Fracturing or Induced hydraulic fracturing

Developed in the late 1940s Hydraulic Fracturing,commonly known as fracking/fraccing/frac job, is a technique used to release petroleum,natural gas(including shale gas,tight gas & coal seam gas) or other substances for extraction. Hydrofrackinginjecting fluid (a mixture of water, sand, and highly toxic chemicals) under high pressure into oil and gas wellshas been used for years. It was developed by Halliburton in the late 1940s.This fact sheet will refer to traditional hydraulic fracturing as old hydrofracking and the wells as traditional wells. Hydrofracking, without the chemical additives, even has been used locally to stimulate flow from shallow water wells.

Do you think "Hydraulic Fracturing", is what is needed for the extraction of shale gas ? Think again !!!

Slickwater hydraulic fracturing or high volumehydraulic fracturing (HVHF) Developed in the late 1990s, not the 1940s. Really began to be used more extensively after 2005, when exempted from several important provisions of the federal environmental regulations

Slickwater hydraulic fracturing

because it uses a different mix of chemicals than the older methods reducing the amount of gelling agents and adding friction reducers (thus the term slick) The hydraulic fracturing technique to be used in the Marcellus shale is also known as high volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF) because it uses much more fluid than old hydraulic How is High Volume HydroFracturing different?

More fresh water

HVHF typically uses 2 to 7.8 million gallons of fluid (or an average 5.6 million gallons) Each well can be fracked up to 18 times, using millions of gallons of water each time 70 300 times more water than conventional hydrofracturing!

More chemicals

2005 2009: 14 Oil and gas service companies used more than 2,500 hydraulic fracturing products containing 750 chemicals and other components. Industry claim no problem, only 1% of the solution. How much is 1% of 57 million gallons? 50,000 70,000 gallons of chemicals More toxic air emissions
Fugitive Emissions Dehydration Vehicles Flaring Engines Pits Venting

Particulate Matter Dust Hydrogen Sulfide Ozone Carbon Monoxide Nitrogen Oxides Sulfur Dioxide VOCs BTEX PAHs Methane

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More toxic waste requiring disposal Recycling? Wastewater treatment plants? Class 2 injection wells?click on link (4,467,913 billion barrels of brine water disposed through injection wells in 2009) Flowback water holding pits? Problem is not only what goes in, but also what comes out? More heavy truck traffic One well may require: 1,760 to 1,905 trips Typical well pad with 7 wells = 13,000 round trips to local roads Includes tanker trucks for water, sand,drilling rig equipment,waste (flowback) water removal Greenhouse gas emissions Cornell study examined life cycle contribution of HVHF Suggests that methane emissions are at least 30% more than and
maybe more than twice as great as those from conventional gas. Higher emissions from shale gas occur at the time wells are hydraulically fracturedas methane escapes from flowback return fluidsand during drill out following the fracturing. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, with a global warming potential that may be greater than that of carbon dioxide, particularly in the years immediately following the emissions.

US EPA
Emissions from the deep shale drilling are almost 9,000 times higher than it had previously calculated, a figure that begins to agree with the Cornell research

Bulgaria is not prepared for high volume, horizontal hydraulic hydrofracturing

In the world, we refer to unconventional resources as being:

Shale gas Tight gas Natural Gas from Coal Tight Oil Gas Hydrates

Gas drilling in Deep shale Unconventional

Water,sand, and chemicals are injected at high pressure to release trapped gas. Well casing cemented into place to protect aquifers and other and other geologic zones. After drilling vertically to the depth that reaches slightly above the shale, the drill bit is turned horizontally and pushed into the shale a mile or more. Small fractures are created in the targeted area with perforating charges(explosions). Fracturing fluids(sand,water & chemicals)are injected at high pressure to further crack the rock and release the gas.

Hydraulic Fracturing Principles

The World is Made of Stress !!!

Vertical Stress

Principle of hydraulic fracturing is to create enough pressure on the rock in the subsurface to overcome the stresses that lie within the rock and create a fracture

Horizontal Stress

Fracture

From a geological perspective there are a number of stresses (or pressures) that are present that affect the ability of rock in the subsurface to fracture

Hydraulic Fracturing is Essentially a 4 Stage Process

Stage 1 Pressure the reservoir rock using a fluid to create a fracture Stage 2 Grow the fracture by continuing to pumping fluids into the fracture(s) Stage 3 Pump proppant materials into the fracture in the form of a slurry as part of the fracture fluid Stage 4 Flowback to the well to recover the fracture fluids while keeping the proppant in place There are variations of these stages or sub-stages depending on the nature of the fracture treatment including variations of pressure and flow rates to control the growth height of the fracture

Stages of Exploration and Development Timeline-Time(years) Between 15-20 years

WELL TYPES The gas well targeted for your neighborhood is not the last one youll experience or the largest. The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), New York States permitting agency, is currently reviewing standards for horizontal drilling / high-volume hydrofracking (HD/HV/HF) in shale formations. Chevron wells planned for Romania,three perimeters are Costinesti, Vama Veche and Adamclisi,are vertical test wells used to sample formations and to test fracking to prepare for the giant horizontal drilling operations that will gradually fill your town. Chevron holds since 2010 exploration rights in northeast Romania and plans to drill the first well close to Barlad in the second half of the year. In the new perimeters Costinesti, Vama Veche and Adamclisi preliminary explorations will take some two years before the first wells are drilled. The complete exploration works will take 4-10 years. Within two years, eight conventional (not hydraulically fractured) wells will be drilled and after another two years the further steps will be decided HOW HD/HV/HF WELLS DIFFER FROM EXISTING GAS WELLS Vertical or horizontal bores intersect existing fractures in porous sandstones and limestones. They require either no fracturing or low-volume fracturing. Shales, on the other hand are very hard and must be fractured. Horizontal drilling creates a ~7500 bore length that is subjected to fracturing. For this reason, HD/HV/HF wells bring up more dangerous drill cuttings, require more hydrofracking fluids, create more wastewater,

generate more air pollution, create more truck traffic and entail more risk. SETBACKS Setback distance from the well bore varies with the target formation. Generally, setbacks are 50 to 100 feet from water bodies; 50 to 150 feet from homes, schools, nursing homes and private wells within the Drilling Unit; and 330 feet from Drilling Unit boundary lines. These figures apply to the well bore, not the pad, which will be anywhere from acre to 5 acres in size. Through Compulsory Integration, an unleased property within the Drilling Unit may have a well pad within 100 feet of its residence. WATER USE AND TRUCK TRAFFIC A built-out HD/HV/HF well pad with eight well bores will require about 4800 such trips. WASTE (FLOWBACK) DISPOSAL Every HD/HV/HF well creates millions of gallons of toxic waste, which is stored in plastic-lined pits subject to leakage until the stuff is hauled away. Amazingly, the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) does not regulate these fluids that the projected wave of gas well drilling can produce. No other agency has any plan to deal with them! There are several ways the gas industry, nationally, disposes of this toxic mix: ROAD USE The HD/HV/HF wells that will follow the test wells in your neighborhood will require about 9,000 truck trips from preparing the site to completing the wells. DRILL CUTTINGS

The creation of a single vertical well bore to an average depth of 3,000 feet brings up about 54 cubic yards of rock chips, including radioactive substances and heavy metals from below, mixed with the chemicals in the drilling fluid (mud). Horizontal wells will produce much more of this material as do vertical wells, and the increase will include radioactive material (the shale). WATER POLLUTION Does not require fracking chemicals to be tested. Without such information, test results are far less able to demonstrate contamination. Whats more, testing may give a false sense of security to the property owner since the state does not require that this testing be done in a manner that would be admissible in a court of law. The methane that naturally occurs in some water proves that pathways already exist. Because fracking itself creates more such pathways, and since the fracking process leaves some of the fracking fluid underground, the heavier fracking chemicals left behind may eventually migrate into drinking water. Despite statements that there are no proven cases of aquifer pollution from hydrofracking, there are numerous documented cases of aquifer pollution from drilling. To the landowners whove lost their drinking water and much of the value of their property, the distinction between drilling and fracking is academic. PIPELINES GAS STORAGE & OTHER INFRASTRUCTURE Gas doesnt come out of the ground in a marketable form. The infrastructure needed to purify it can end up in your neighborhood. Raw-gas transport requires on-site removal of liquid water, which contains contaminants. On-site tanks contain this

water until it can be removed by tankers or pumped to a remote location. Besides methane, the chemical name for natural gas, raw gas also contains other volatile gases. Natural gas liquids, such as ethane and propane, are stripped out, saved for removal by tanker and sold. BETX volatiles (butane, ethylbenzene, toluene and xylene), are odorless, invisible and extremely dangerous. They are vented as waste at compressor stations. Compressor stations will be required to bring the gas pressure in smaller gathering pipelines up to the pressure in larger pipelines. Each compressor station will service gas wells within a 4- to-6-mile radius and will have dehydration units to remove water vapor from the gas. Compressor stations are extremely noisy the equivalent of a propeller plane flying overhead or a concrete mixer and operate 24 / 7. Since the compressors are diesel-powered, they too emit pollutants, including the BTEXs. Where company-owned pipelines meet transmission utilities (like some USA pipelines), the stations hold multiple compressors. These are industrial-scale installations that may require as many as 50 acres each.

What are the costs?

Polluted waterways Polluted land Polluted underground aquifers Polluted air Toxic waste Livestock, wildlife death and disease Harm to human health (cancer, neurological disease, etc.) Displaced communities Huge pressure on scarce fresh water resources Negative impact on farming and other industries Other social, cultural, environmental costs

 Possibly create mini-earthquakes

We wait New U.S. EPA study

EPA investigate how fracking affects drinking water budgeted at $3.5 million over 2 years (2012) (2014) Study to be transparent and peer reviewed, 4 hearings EPAs study is based on life cycle impacts of fracking fluids Impacts from water demands and the air pathways included

Questions?
To be continued ....

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