Permeability estimates from microseismic data

Those who've followed this blog for a while will know that my attitude to open access publishing is luke-warm at best. However, today I can claim that I'm doing my bit for OA, because a colleague has had a paper published in the 'International Scholarly Research Network' Geophysics Journal. Which means you can read it free of charge here.

Personally, I would have preferred to submit to a more established journal. ISRN Geophysics has published a total of 9 papers ever in its history. Geophysics (published by the SEG) has published about 30 papers a month since 1936. I doubt this paper will ever win me any points in a REF submission. However, it'll be interesting to see whether the fact that it is open access leads to a higher number of citations down the line.

What I will say is that I was very impressed by the speed at which Hindawi Publishing turned the article around. I have an article still awaiting publishing in Geophysical Prospecting that has taken more than a year and is still not yet available. This article was submitted in mid December, and is now available online with DOI number by mid-February, which is frankly pretty damn good.

Anyway, since it is openly available to you, I thought I might try to explain what we have done in the paper. So here goes:

One of the crucial things that reservoir engineers always want to find out about a reservoir is the permeability, because this controls how fast the gas and/or oil will flow to the well. There are a number of ways permeability can be estimated, but my colleague Doug Angus at Leeds University has been coming up with a way to estimate it using microseismic events.

During hydraulic fracturing (fracking), microseismic events are triggered by the pulse of fluid pressure moving out from the wellbore. Much as the speed of the gas going into the well during production will be controlled by permeability, so the speed of the pressure pulse moving away from the wellbore during fracking will be controlled by permeability. So by tracking the distance of the microseismic events from the well through time, we can estimate the permeability.

Much of the work on this has been done by Serge Shapiro of Freie Universitat Berlin. The Shapiro method assumes that microseismic events are triggered by small pore pressure perturbations, and solves the diffusion equation to determine how quickly events should move out from the injection well. However, what this doesn't take into account is the deformation of the rock itself. The increases in pressure will be causing poro-elastic deformation as well. An alternative model developed by Alexander Rozhko of Schlumberger incorporates the triggering of microseismic events through stress changes produced by poro-elastic deformation.

In this paper, Doug compares the two models, using them to predict the microseismicity induced during a multistage fracking operation, where in one stage water was used as the fluid, and in the other CO2 was used. Despite the different fluid properties, both methods should in theory recover the same permeabilities.

The following figures show how the two different models fit the data (first the Shapiro diffusion model, then the Rozhko poroelastic model):
Note that while both models fit the data reasonably well, both make very different predictions for what would happen to the microseismicity though time had the injection continued. With the diffusion model, event-injection point distance keeps increasing, with the poro-elastic model it becomes capped.

The permeability estimates for both models are broadly consistent - approximately 50-100 milliDarcies (no, not a small Colin Firth). However, the estimates from the poro-elastic method are more consistent and more stable. Therefore, based on this dataset at least, this method is Doug's preferred choice for permeability estimation using microseismic event locations.

So there you are - my first OA paper, and an attempt to explain it in layman's terms. I hope you made it to the end.

Geologists and shelf stackers

Apart from the coal, the oil, the gas, the plastics, the minerals, the water, the understanding of natural hazards, the evidence for evolution, what have geologists ever done for us?

The geo-twitter-sphere has exploded in the last couple of days with irate geologists. You'd have thought that it would take a lot to upset such a group of usually 'rock-solid' people, but Iain Duncan Smith's comments that shelf-stacking is just as important as geology, has clearly upset a lot of geologists.

I think we all know how important geology is to the way the world works - that's why a geology degree can be a really useful thing. (In case you're not sure, check out the GeolSoc twitter feed for the many comments explaining exactly why geology is important for putting food on the shelves).

But I think we all might be over-reacting just a little bit to IDS's comments. My twitter stream has been full of little else in the last two days. The Geol Soc has even felt compelled to do a press release on the matter, now reported on by the Mail, Independent and Guardian among others.

I don't think IDS was really trying to belittle the importance of geologists, and I hope most of us are smart enough to realise this. Clearly he was trying to suggest that we should not be so disdainful of low-paying, so called 'menial' jobs, and the people that do them. Moreover, that taking any job is better than being unemployed.

We could be talking about the bigger issues relating to this incident - is it right that we expect benefits claimants to take on work experience when/where available? If so, can we structure it so that it is a little smarter? For instance: it might be best for someone who sits on the sofa doing nothing all day to be compelled to work in a supermarket. However, for someone already volunteering in a museum, shelf stacking might not be the best use of their time.

Finally, is it right that a private company (Poundland) gets to benefit from essentially free labour? Surely Poundland should at the very least be paying their benefits (or even paying them a proper salary) for the duration that they work there?

Instead, we're all upset about IDS apparently showing disrespect to geology, with the overdone, slightly-fake-seeming howls of outrage (like a footballer going down for a cheap free-kick), to the point that our principal learned society has felt the need to put out a press release on the issue. I think we as a community look more than a little silly and oversensitive.

When 7 of the world's top 10 companies by revenue are oil and gas companies (so have geology at the core of their business), I think we can afford to be a little more mature, and a little less quick to take offence if someone inadvertently implies that we're not that important.

Update (17:00, 20.02.2012): There's another piece in the Guardian on the IDS comments issue. It raises the salient point that it is important that we as geologists remind the world of our relevance from time to time, that much of the public have little idea about what we do. Perhaps the majority assume that all we do is fossils and volcanoes? If that's true, who's fault is that? Whenever I see geology outreach being done, it's either about volcanoes or it's about fossils (or, to be really exciting, both at the same time).

If we as geologists have an image problem (and I'm really not sure that we do), the outreach we do should highlight the role of geology in supplying the raw materials needed for this modern life of ours. Rather than waiting for the next ministerial slip-up to advertise our subject....

BGS shale gas estimates: an update, and other London meetings

I've just got back to Bristol from a very interesting few days in London, first at an AAPG conference on induced seismicity, followed by a BGA conference on geophysics and new energy challenges.

The first item of note was a talk given by Mike Stephenson of the BGS on UK shale gas. He didn't mention any numbers from the upcoming BGS resource estimate, so I took the trouble of asking him for a comment on the numbers published by the Times last weekend. In his words: 'they've simply made those numbers up'.

Fair enough, I guess that'll teach the likes of me to go jumping on every number you see in the press. Of course, he'd have to say that, as it would be embarrassing for the BGS to have had a leak, but either way hopefully the BGS will get around to giving us some figures in the very near future (it was originally supposed to be released in January, and we're still waiting).

I also got to have a good long chat with Huw Clarke, who is Cuadrilla's chief microseismic guy. One thing that noone has really talked about much is the flow rates from Cuadrilla's fracked well.

We've all talked plenty about the earthquake they produced, but we've all forgotten that they successfully completed 6 stages of fracking, and have tested the flow rates they got back after the frack. Whether or not the flow rates are sufficient to be economical will be a key part of whether shale gas extraction will happen in the UK.

Of course, Cuadrilla's flow rates are highly highly highly commercially sensitive, and there's no way Cuadrilla are going to tell anyone what they are. But it's interesting to note that, after having measured the flow rates, Cuadrilla have been happy to pay for a 3D seismic survey, the installation of a dense array of permanent geophone sensors, and a whole heap of PR on the side (as well as leaving the drilling rig parked in Lancashire when it could be drilling holes anywhere in Europe).

These aren't the kind of things you'd do if you have concerns about the economic viability of the gas flow rates from the shale formation, which of course implies that Cuadrilla probably think they're sitting on some pretty significant resources.


Other things that came up in these conferences? One of the major themes can be summarised as 'Induced seismicity, friend or foe', or 'Induced seismicity, the good, the bad and the ugly'. Of course, if you've met many geophysicists, you'll know what the 'ugly' is describing.

Whenever you inject fluids into, or take fluids out of, a reservoir, you change the stress state. This will almost inevitably induce earthquakes. The majority of these are so small (M-3 to M-1) that they can only be detected with sensitive seismometers placed right next to the target of interest. We geophysicists locate the microearthquakes, using them to learn about the stress state and fractures in the reservoir, enabling operators to improve the safety and economic viability of their operations. This is the good, or friend, part of induced seismicity.

However, every so often, as at Blackpool, operations create a larger event, which can be felt by the public. This tends to cause a lot of alarm, and the operators start to feel the regulators breathing down their neck. This is induced seismicity the bad, or the foe.

The big problem is that we're still not really very good at predicting when we'll just get small events, and when we'll get larger ones. Clearly the presence of a pre-existing fault is needed for a larger event. But many operations occur right next to faults without triggering any seismicity.

So it seems we still don't know why 99% of our activities don't trigger felt seismicity, but some do. There are probably about 150,000 waste-water injection wells in the US, and only about 10-20 have induced felt seismicity. There have been hundreds of thousands of fracking stages completed in the US, yet only one in Oklahoma, one in Blackpool, and a few in British Columbia, have triggered felt earthquakes.

So this was probably one of the key aspects emerging from these two meetings: the need to develop improved geomechanical modelling of reservoir activities (whether it be fracking, carbon dioxide injection for CCS, or waste-water injection), so we can predict whether we're likely to trigger a larger earthquake on a fault. So if you are a budding geoscientist or engineer deciding what direction to pursue, I'd recommend looking in to this, because improvements in this area will be really significant for a lot of industries.

New BGS shale gas estimates leaked: and there's a lot of it!

Breaking news from the Times this weekend. I should add as a caveat that I have no idea how they got hold of the figures, as they haven't been officially released by the BGS yet. However, several sources seem to have confirmed the numbers.

The UK is sitting on 1,300 - 1,700 TCF (trillion cubic feet) of shale gas. For those who don't know how much a TCF is, a useful comparison is the since we started producing gas from the North Sea, we have produced 83TCF, while the Norwegians have produced 57TCF. So 1,300TCF is A LOT.

At this point it is necessary to point out that this figure is the resource. Only a portion of this will be economically extractable - say 10% as a ball-park figure. But even 10% of 1,300 TCF is 130TCF, which is approximately the amount extracted from the North Sea over the last 40 years.

The main article is hidden behind the Times paywall, and I have no desire to put any more money into Mr Murdoch's pocket. However, I've picked up a little more of the article via the No Hot Air website:

Britain could have enough shale gas to heat every home for 1,500 years, according to new estimates that suggest reserves are 200 times greater than experts previously believed. The British Geological Survey is understood to have increased dramatically its official estimate of the amount of shale gas to between 1,300 trillion and 1,700 trillion cubic feet, dwarfing its previous estimate of 5.3 trillion cubic feet.

According to industry sources, the revised estimates will be published by the Government next month, fueling hopes that new “fracking” techniques to capture trapped resources will result in cheaper energy bills.

It is thought that it will be technically possible to recover up to a fifth of this gas, making Britain’s shale rocks potentially as bountiful as those in the US. Experts stressed that it was still much too early to say how much of the gas it would be economic to get out of the ground to heat homes and help to generate electricity.

However, in the interests of balance, I must take the Times to task for their headline. Claiming that we have enough gas for 1,500 years is inaccurate, as only a small amount of the BGS resource estimate will be extractable. Moreover, if we are still relying on gas as the dominant fuel in 1,500 years time then  I would be extremely surprised!

As for the influence of this find on domestic gas bills, I think that is still anyone's guess. Increasing supply will reduce prices - that much is basic economics. But it may not reduce them by much, unless other countries also develop shale gas, as demand is also likely to be high. But it's worth bearing in mind that if global gas prices do remain high, then we as a country can make lots of money producing and selling the gas, while if they drop, we as consumers benefit from cheaper energy. Regardless of what gas prices do, a find this large is a win-win situation. The question now is whether the BGS will confirm these numbers?

Between a rock and a hard place: Welcome to the blogosphere

Just a short note to welcome a new Bristol Earth Sciences blog to the blogosphere. Between a Rock and A Hard Place is being written by some of our Earth Science PhD students.

I look forward to seeing what you produce while avoiding writing up your theses. A blog as the ultimate procrastination tool is a fabulous idea. Marvellous. Good luck.

Artists tour of shale gas in Pennsylvania

In order to draw attention to the danger of fracking, Josh Fox took the Artists Against Fracking on a tour of the Pennsylvania shale gas fields. Here's the video:


Seems innocuous enough. But this little tour has been all over the web garnering controversy, so I guess I might as well jump on the bandwagon. The tour was lead by Vera Scroggins, a local anti-gas activist. Here's what she had to say to Phelim McAleer, the director of FrackNation, when he turned up to try to interview some of the celebs:



Fairly shockingly xenophobic! Funnily enough, this doesn't make it into Josh Fox's AAF video.

Anyway, the main part of the visit was to the Mannings in Franklin Forks, which presents another interesting fracking story, fairly representative of how much things have deteriorated in these parts. I think, whether you are pro or anti, you'd have to agree that the debate surrounding it is now a big murky mess, and any semblance of trust has evaporated on both sides.

The Manning's water well began behaving strangely, with high levels of methane, and bursting from the top, as you can see in this video. Gas drilling has occurred nearby (note that the video has been posted by Ms Scroggins, her of the Irish-drunks tirade above):

Of course, WPX, the gas drilling company disputes that they are the cause of contamination. They argue that shallow natural gas accumulations are common in the area - indeed records of shallow gas seeps are found as far back as 1921, and water quality in the area is reportedly poor anyway.

WPX also claim that the strange bursting behaviour of the well is not due to the gas but due to a mechanical fault in a pump. There's video been posted video of WPX employees demonstrating the problem and attempting to fix it:

What's interesting is that there was more than one video camera at this little shindig. Vera Scroggins was there to stir the pot a bit:

The upshot now is that the lawyers are involved, and WPX employees are no longer allowed on the property.

The first thing that strikes me about these videos is that everyone has now resorted to shoving cameras in each other's faces. Everyone filming everyone else. A complete lack of trust all round.

Isotopic testing of the gas appears to suggest that the gas has a shallow origin (i.e., is not from the shale formations). However, the only results published are from WPX testing, everyone is still waiting on DEP results.

All in all, I think this shows what a mess the situation appears to have become. Communities are tearing themselves apart over this, and that's due in equal measure to the activities of both the pro- and anti- sides.

Determining water that is often naturally bad from water contaminated by fracking (and many, if not most, oil and gas fields have naturally occurring shallow accumulations) is not an easy problem. And it's a situation that is wide-open to manipulation and distortion from both sides. Plus, America being full of lawyers, things get even more complicated, to the point where everyone now seems to be videoing everyone else.

Certainly, the classic tale of little local people defending themselves from nasty big corporations is not really applicable, despite how attractive that story may be to the big Hollywood names on a day-trip from NYC. I don't think the AAF video even touches the complexity of the situation.

FrackNation

Sorry, been a bit lax in terms of regular posting this month. I've been a busy boy. Just quick one for now to keep you interested, which is to mention 'FrackNation', a new film that has come out recently in the US.

The aim of the film is to show the other side of the argument to Josh Fox's Gasland, which was the real start for the anti-fracking movement. Even now, when anti-fracking groups are set up, Gasland is often the first port-of-call for resources about why fracking is bad.

The film has been funded by Kickstarter, which is a crowd-sourced funding project, so it's not paid for directly by oil companies (although it wouldn't surprise me if many of the funders were people who have benefited from shale gas through leases, royalties etc).

The film has been released on US cable, but unfortunately I suspect that, short of buying the DVD, it might be a while before it is available in the UK. So in the meantime, here are a few trailers:





You can see that the film follows a similar 'intentionally-low-budget-looking' format, candid camera style popularised by the likes of Michael Moore.

Subject matter apart (and I look forward to seeing the full version, by all accounts Josh Fox and Gasland appear to have been blown out of the water), I find this style of documentary-making interesting: rushing up to people and asking them awkward questions, and no doubt employing some selective editing. I'm sure that a good journalist, combined with selective editing, could make anyone look pretty bad about pretty much anything. Usually, it's the Josh Fox's and Michael Moore's, who are from the left of the political spectrum, doing this. Now it seems those of the right (and the producer, Phelim McAleer, does appear to be fairly Conservative) are picking up on this tactic.

Anyway, enjoy the trailers, I will try to watch the full version and let you know my thoughts as soon as I can.

Conventional vs shale: what's the difference?

Oil and gas production is a complicated business. To get those molecules of hydrocarbon from the microscopic sandstone pores kilometers underground all the way to your car's petrol tank or your home's central heating system takes a huge amount of engineering. Shale gas extraction is no different in this respect - in fact it requires additional stages of engineering on top of what is required for normal gas and oil extraction. So I figured it would be of interest to look at what is different in shale gas compared to conventional, and what is the same.

Drilling
Wells drilled to extract conventional HCs are pretty much identical to shale gas wells. They are drilled in the same way, cemented in the same way. Horizontal wells are now common in conventional production, just like they are in shale gas. Check out the map of the Weyburn oilfield (Canda) below - each line is a horizontal well bore, some of which produce oil, some of which inject CO2 to help force the oil out. Conventional and shale wells have pretty similar risks in terms of wellbore integrity and gas leakage.

(click to enlarge)

Hydraulic Fracturing
This is one of the big differences between conventional and shale gas. Although HF is often used in conventional gas fields, it is not usually on the same scale as for shale gas. So, what extra risks does the HF process itself entail? Evidence is pretty clear that the fractures that are created are not providing contamination pathways for gas or nasties to get back to the surface: the fractures created are simply too small and too deep - not even the most ardent anti-frackers are arguing this I don't think. Of course, hydraulic fracturing uses water, some of which comes back up to the surface - I'll talk about this a little more below.

Number of wells
Usually, you would expect to have fewer wells in a conventional field than for a shale gas field. This isn't always the case - look at the number of wells at Weyburn, above, or the Jonah gasfield (below). However, as a general rule, expect more wells for a shale field.

Water Usage
Firstly, water usage. Some water is required to drill a well. I'm not sure how much, but it rarely seems to be an issue for conventional wells. On top of that, hydraulic fracturing also requires 1-5 million gallons (about 10,000-20,000m3, or 4-8 Olympic swimming pools) of water. 5 million gallons sounds like a lot, but it's all about the context. In the UK, 2,559 megaliters of water are lost through leaks in our water system every day. That's 676 million gallons (or 2.5 million m3, or 1000 Olympic swimming pools), enough to frack more than hundred wells every day! If we improve leakage rates in our water system by 1%, we'd have enough water to spare to frack a well every day. So water usage isn't really an issue - if you're worried about the next hosepipe ban, get on to your water supplier to fix their leaks.

Produced water
One of the issues with fracking is that the injected water comes back up the well. Even if the latest CleanSTIM fluids are used (using only ingredients available for use in the food industry), the returning fluids are contaminated by their time in the reservoir, picking up NORM, heavy metals and organic compounds. When the water is returned up the well, it has to be dealt with.

But what about conventional HC production? Most conventional reservoirs have what is called residual water saturation - the part of the rock's pore space that is filled with water rather than hydrocarbon. When the reservoir is produced, the water comes up along with the oil and gas. This water has been in contact with the oil, gas and rock for millions of years, so like the fracking water it may be contaminated with NORM, heavy metals and organic compounds, and it must be dealt with. It's not actually an issue I'd given much thought to until now - having a blog is sometimes great for making you research something you otherwise hadn't considered. As far as I can gather from this page, it appears that in the North Sea this produced water is treated on site and then dumped into the sea. This was quite surprising to me - that it was easy enough to clean the water on-rig to a standard where it can be put back into the sea! Onshore (at Humbly Grove for example) it would appear that this water is re-injected into a deep lying aquifer (I couldn't find out anything about whether it was treated first or not).

So dealing with produced water would appear to be as much an issue for conventional production as it is for shale gas. The main difference is that for shale gas all the water is produced immediately in the days after the frack, while for a conventional field it is produced continuously through the life of the field.

Seismicity
Shale gas extraction has generated a couple of small earthquakes near Blackpool. However, induced seismicity occurs in conventional reservoirs too (read the abstract of this scientific paper, or the whole thing if you have access). So again, as much an issue for conventional production as for shale gas.

Surface Impact
I'm sure many of you enjoyed the good debate between myself, 'John' and 'Anonymous' on my previous post about the surface impact of shale gas extraction. In as much as shale gas fields will probably have more wells than conventional fields, there will be a bigger surface impact. Conversely, however, shale gas wells will be capped with Christmas trees, which are fairly low impact in comparison with a nodding donkey which might be needed for a conventional oilfield. Examples of both are below.

Oilfield nodding donkeys (above) and gas production 'Christmas Tree' (below):

As for other 'excrescences' of the oil and gas processing chain, as John so eloquently described them - pipelines, compressor stations, processing facilities - these are pretty much the same whether it's shale or conventional gas (obviously, oil requires different processing facilities).

All of this leads me to a question that I'd like to ask those who are opposed to shale gas development. Would your opposition be as fervent if new conventional gas fields had been found under Blackpool, rather than shale gas?

Shale gas, and fracking, sounds scary in comparison with the conventional production that we've had for a hundred years. However, when you break things down and look at the major objections to shale gas, are they much different to conventional operations? Wellbore integrity (and the risk of gas leakage from wells) is as much an issue for conventional gas as it is for shale. Dealing with contaminated produced water is always an issue for conventional reservoirs, much as it will be for shale. Induced seismicity happens for both conventional and shale. Shale gas will likely have more wells, and so a greater surface impact, than conventional gas, but this is an incremental increase, not a game changer, while much of the related infrastructure - pipelines, processing facilities etc - will be similar. Intellectual honesty would dictate that if you are opposed to shale gas extraction for these reasons, you should be equally opposed to conventional onshore gas extraction.

Given this, would a better description for those opposed to shale gas development in the UK be 'anti-onshore gas development', rather than 'anti-fracking' or 'anti-shale-gas'?

Book Review: A Hole at the Bottom of the Sea

Among the socks, port and cheese, I received a rather good Christmas present this year: A Hole at the Bottom of the Sea (The Race to Kill the BP Oil Gusher), by Joel Achenbach.

It tells the story firstly of events on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the days leading up to the catastrophic blowout, and then of the efforts by BP and the US government to cap the well as it gushed approximately 50,000 barrels of oil every day.

First and foremost, it gives an insight into the complicated engineering procedures on a rig - essentially incomprehensible to the average man on the street. For example:

This story had its own interesting lexicon, a language crafted by men who use tools. Offshore drilling is rough stuff, hard-edged, coarse [...] What they do is complex, difficult and dangerous. They drill holes in the pressurized Earth. They extract crude. They pump mud and cement, and handle gear weighing tens of thousands of pounds on a rig that weighs millions [...] And so even the language is masculine, the words often short, blunt, monosyllabic. Spud. Hot stab. Top kill. Junk shot. Dump box. Choke line. Kill line. Ram. Ram block. Ram packer. Side packer. Stack. Valve. Tick. Pod. Borehole. Bottom hole. Dry hole. Drill pipe. Coning. Cylinder gauge. Cavity. Rat head. Stopcocking. Torque tube.... 

More importantly, it shows how industrial accidents can occur. In complex systems, events can have unintended, unforeseen consequences that can turn small mishaps into massive disasters:

The Macondo well blowout was a classic industrial accident, a sequence of tightly coupled events in which no single action could have caused the disaster. Some of the mistakes are screamingly obvious in retrospect, but at the critical moments, decisions were fogged by uncertainty.

This has wider implications than a single accident in the Gulf of Mexico:

The Deepwater Horizon tragedy is a reminder of how little most of us know about modern technology. We don't know how anything works [...] The irony is that we're inhabitants of a planet that is becoming increasingly engineered. The engineers are brilliant and creative, and most of us have little appreciation for what they do, so deftly is their handiwork woven into our daily lives.

Our engineered planet poses a challenge for us:

We need to remember that sometimes bad things happen to complex systems, that gremlins roam the earth. Things go wrong. Count on it. The engineered planet challenges all of us to be a little bit smarter, to pay more attention. We need to learn the jargon, understand the risks [...] Even if there's not another deepwater blowout anytime soon, there will be something that happens, something awful and unexpected, that involves the failure of a complex technology. It could happen in outer space, at the bottom of the sea, in a nuclear power plant, on the electrical grid, or somewhere in the computer infrastructure that networks the planet [...] There will be more black plumes. There will be other fires on the horizon. Low-probability, high consequence events are made all the more devastating, potentially, by the scale and sophistication of modern technology [...] As we go down this technological path, we will count on complex systems to work correctly. We will assume that someone smart is in charge, looking over our world, protecting us [...] Here's the thing: Usually the technological magic works. Usually nothing terrible happens. Usually.

This is not a Luddite call. New technology is vital to human progress. Any call to return to some sort of agrarian free-living paradise is to forget how cruel and unpleasant life in these societies used to be. Nevertheless, we have to treat our novel systems with the respect they deserve:

As we grope our way forward, we can develop a few rules. Such as: When doing something risky, remember that risk build like plaque, Make sure your backup plan really is in back and won't get blown up out front along with your plan A. Remember that low probability, high consequence events become more likely given enough time and opportunity [...] Measure your misery. Don't shy away from knowing precisely how bad you're screwed [...] Keep the fixers away from the talkers. Don't expose the engineers to any political shenanigans, media madness or public outrage [...] And finally, the most important lesson: Keep your wits about you. It is extraordinarily unlikely that the disaster you are dealing with is qualitatively worse than the many calamities that human beings have survived to this point. In fact, it's probably not as difficult as any number of challenges that people have overcome, from wars to famines to pestilence to floods to storms to earthquakes. People survive, rebuild, thrive. The strange thing about Armageddon is that it never actually happens. So don't panic. The problem will be solved. May not be pretty, but it'll get done.

I think Achenbach's take on this can be readily applied to shale gas extraction: a complex engineered system, where usually the technological magic usually works just fine, but there is always the possibility of a Black Swan event. It is the duty of engineers to properly respect the system they have constructed, keeping their wits about them to do their utmost to minimise risks, to prevent risks building up like plaque. It is the responsibility of the public to learn the jargon and understand the processes, while at the same time not turning engineering issues into political shenanigans, media madness and public outrage. This doesn't lead to sensible decision making.

Anyway, I thought it was a great read. My better half was very disappointed as I was lost to her, deep in the pages of the book, through much of Christmas Day evening and Boxing Day. I'd recommend it not just to people interested in learning more detail about the BP disaster, but to learn much more about how we drill for oil out at sea most of the rest of the time when things aren't going wrong, and to gain an appreciation of the scale of complex engineering that is required simply to put petrol in your car. Read it, and then remember it next time you fill up.

Finally, one point worth remembering, from all the nerds out there:

In crunch time, call in the nerds as well as the cowboys.

Cuadrilla, Elswick and some spectacular hypocrisy from Frack-Off

Let me begin by wishing you all a happy Christmas - I hope you ate lots of turkey, those little sausages with the bacon wrapped round (my favourite) and Xmas pudding!

But now, to business. It has slipped under my radar until now, but as well as the drilling sites on the Fylde Peninsular, Cuadrilla are the proud owners of a small gas well at Elswick, a small town on the Fylde. The question is, why?

The may be many reasons - for example the sale from Independent, the previous owners, may have included geological or geophysical data that could have been beneficial to Cuadrilla. However, it wouldn't be surprising if, as surmised by Frack-Off, a major element in the sale was the use of Elswick for PR purposes.

You can see on the Cuadrilla site a couple of images of the site. The well-head is capped by a 'Christmas tree', about the size of a person. The site can be easily concealed with a medium-sized hedgerow. This is what a shale-gas drilling site will look like once the drilling and fracturing stages are completed (so about 6 months to a year after drilling begins). So owning this site, and having photos to plaster all over the web will provide a useful PR opportunity for Cuadrilla.

Also, note that the well has been hydraulically fractured. Not to the same extent as what is needed to produce shale gas, but it provides an idea of a typical UK onshore gas example, a well has been drilled, fracked, and has produced gas for 20 years without any environmental incidents of any kind. Certainly a useful example to have, even if shale gas extraction will be on a larger scale than this. If 50% of wells fail after 20 years, as claimed by Josh Fox in The Sky is Pink, I guess this must just be one of the lucky ones.....

I did rather enjoy Frack-Off's spectacularly hypocritical article on the Elswick well. It begins with a reasonable enough description of the Elswick site, and Cuadrilla's motives for buying it. However, for Frack-Off, the fact that it is a single well makes the example meaningless, and they end the article with the usually predictable Cuadrilla-bashing.

Of course more wells will be needed to produce a shale gas reservoir. Probably one well-head every few miles. What the Elswick example is good for though, is to show what one of these well-heads will look like. Could we handle an Elswick every few miles?

Well, Frack-Off's response is this photo-shopped monstrosity:

 

It's photo-shopped from this photo from the Jonah Gas field, Wyoming, overlaying some British countryside onto this image:

The Jonah Field is a tight gas (i.e. sandstone) field developed in the early 1990s. That is before the technology to drill horizontal wells had been developed, so of course there are a lot of wells. Shale gas in the UK would look nothing like the Jonah field.

If Frack-Off don't like Cuadrilla's use of Elswick for PR on the basis that it is a single well site, while shale gas would use many, it's surely pretty duplicitous for them, in the same article, to use an image from a field developed using obsolete 1990s technology for their own PR. It all seems spectacularly hypocritical to me......

Update 28.12.2012: In case you can't be bothered to click the link, here's the image of the Elswick Christmas Tree:

Update 2, 28.12.2012: Rather than using old, 1990 gas wells (either Elswick or Jonah Field), perhaps we'd all be better off using some up to date pictures. Perhaps, for example, from the Pennsylvania shale gas fields currently being developed. Here are a couple of links to aerial photo tours of affected areas:

http://www.geo.cornell.edu/eas/PeoplePlaces/Faculty/cathles/Gas%20Blog%20PDFs/10-%20Will%20gas%20development%20be%20ugly.pdf

http://www.flickr.com/photos/skytruth/sets/72157632055783199/with/8203603186/