Tiny Ceramic Beads Boost Utica Production, but Not Marcellus
We spotted an interesting article appearing in the American Oil & Gas Reporter about results from using tiny ceramic beads as a proppant in oil and gas wells in several shale plays. Typically sand is used as a proppant to “prop open” tiny fractures to allow oil and gas to escape from shale rock. Sometimes ceramic beads are used. The article is based on a paper delivered at the Society of Petroleum Engineers’ Hydraulic Fracturing Technical Conference & Exhibition, held Feb. 4-6 in The Woodlands, Texas. Of particular interest to us are the findings for the Utica and Marcellus. The “micropropped” Utica wells showed a marked increase in oil production, while no such increase in production happened in micropropped Marcellus wells.
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What happens when an oil driller has a well or two or dozen where they get great oil production, but there are no pipelines connected to cart away the associated natural gas that comes out of the borehole along with the oil? There are only a couple of options–venting (releasing methane into the air) and flaring (burning the methane, turning it into carbon dioxide). There are a number of innovative companies that have a new solution: Go ahead and burn the methane, but burn it to produce electricity, and use the electricity (at the well site) to power computers. The computers are connected to a network of other computers and form a sort of supercomputer. Crusoe Energy Systems is one of those innovative companies, now using their distributed computing systems at oil wells to work on computations aimed at finding a vaccine for the COVID-19 coronavirus.
Earlier this month the Ohio Oil & Gas Association (OOGA) held its 73rd annual Winter Meeting in Columbus. One of the speakers was Martin Shumway, technical director at Locus Bio-Energy Solutions. Shumway shared details from the latest DeBrosse Memorial Report (full copy below). What does the report show for 2019? Ohio oil production hit the highest level ever in state history in 2019. There were 406 oil and gas wells completed last year, of which 351 (86%) were Utica wells. Belmont County saw the most wells drilled (80). Ascent Resources (formerly American Energy Partners) drilled the most wells last year in Ohio (104 wells), up 49% from 2018.
Who are the biggest natural gas sellers in the U.S.? You might be surprised to learn that the biggest *sellers* are not necessarily the biggest *producers* of natural gas. Oh, you might recognize some of the names of the top sellers (BP, Shell, ConocoPhillips). But others might be more of a mystery (Macquarie, Tenaska, Sequent, and J. Aron & Co.). Would it surprise you to learn that BP (i.e. British Petroleum) is the #1 seller of natgas in the U.S., and has been for years?
Each month the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) produces its Drilling Productivity Report (DPR), our favorite monthly report. The DPR estimates how much oil and natural gas each of the country’s seven largest shale plays produced in the previous (current) month, and how much each will produce in the coming (next) month. The February DPR showed, for the first time, combined natgas production from all shale plays would decrease beginning in March (see 
Enverus, a leading oil and gas SaaS and data analytics company, yesterday released its latest FundamentalEdge report, called “Marcellus Natural Gas Flows,” which is focused on natural gas production and pipeline flow patterns in the Marcellus and Utica formations in the Northeast, MidAtlantic, and Midwestern regions of the U.S. Enervus measures gas flows along pipelines and as part of the preview of their report has shared with MDN some fascinating information. Like this: Some 41% of the gas produced in the Marcellus flows to the Mid-Atlantic region. Who knew?!
Although in 2019 the price of natural gas began a decline, and gas-focused companies scaled back drilling programs, the U.S. still hit a new all-time high record of natural gas production. The U.S. Energy Information Administration says U.S. natural gas production measured as gross withdrawals (the most comprehensive measure of natural gas production) averaged 111.5 Bcf/d in 2019, the highest volume on record. The biggest jump in production in 2019 did not come from associated gas in the Permian Basin. Rather, the biggest jump came from (yep) the Marcellus/Utica.
At first efforts by the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) and its Marcellus Shale Energy and Environment Laboratory (launched five years ago) was aimed at tests to ensure fracking of shale wells (in all regions) does not harm the environment. It worked. NETL did prove that modern drilling and fracking is safe. Now the NETL mission has changed. New NETL tests launched across the country over the past year will help drillers understand how to frack even better than they do now! Yes, it can help drillers with their bottom line, but the purpose of NETL’s testing goes far beyond that.
Mudrock Energy is a consulting company based near Pittsburgh that provides specialized geoscience analysis and market research across the energy industry. Mudrock founder and CEO Dave Boyer, an AAPG Certified Petroleum Geologist, recently worked up an analysis of Pennsylvania’s shale production. He published his research on the Medium website and sent us a link with an encouragement to share it with the MDN audience. In his analysis, Boyer makes the case that PA’s continuing expansion of ever more production needs to stop. NOW.
The American Petroleum Institute recently released the results of a study they commissioned that outlines the “dire consequences” of a ban on hydraulic fracturing–the kind of ban being pushed by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Joe Biden. Here’s how dire it gets: If a frack ban is slapped into place by a Democrat President, by 2022 it will result in 7.5 million lost jobs, and by 2030 a total loss out of the economy of $7.5 TRILLION! You might as well say we will enter a new economic depression, the likes of which we haven’t experienced since the 1930s.
For years anti-fossil fuel zealots have used and abused the word “fracking” and its derivatives to describe horizontal hydraulic fracturing, and more generically to describe the entire shale oil and gas industry (drilling, pipelines, etc.). Antis love to slip in phrases like “fracked gas” and refer to those who work in the industry as “frackers.” They call themselves “fracktivists.” It all sounds so naughty. We happen to love the word and we embrace it, to shove it right back in their faces (others in our industry do not like the word and sometimes chide us for using it). A couple of so-called researchers have coined a new fracking-related term: “fraccidents.”
One of our favorite publications to read is the Pittsburgh Business Times. The PBT recently researched and published a list of the “
University of Texas at Austin researchers have just published two new wastewater studies in two different peer-reviewed journals. One study quantifies, for the first time, how much water is produced from oil and natural gas operations in major shale plays (including the Marcellus) compared with how much is needed for fracking. In some plays, there is so much water coming out of the ground from oil and gas wells (after fracking, called produced water) that the volume coming out is more than enough to drill and frack all of the new wells in those plays. No freshwater sources required. In the Marcellus, we use more water than could be provided by recycling produced water from our wells. The second study looks at the potential for using produced water in other sectors, like agriculture, for those plays where there is an abundance of extra produced water.