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Nevvy Z posted:I had this idea recently. Someone should setup a system by which I can buy a couple hundred bucks of gas redeemable whenever. Basically small scale private speculation by the x number of gallons. Short of playing options/futures no one is going to hold gasoline for you. Also, you have about 6-9 months for prices to go back up, because your gasoline is going to destabilize.
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Jan 13, 2016 00:04
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Rand alPaul posted:As someone who lives in Oklahoma and suffers through daily earthquakes I would like to thank Saudi Arabia for loving with frackers. You're conflating fracing and waste water disposal. While they are related, they are not the same thing.
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Jan 14, 2016 13:57
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Mozi posted:Would there be waste water disposal without fracking? Are the waste water disposal companies entirely separate from fracking companies, sharing no legal responsibilities? Are you just being pedantic? There would still be waste water disposal without fracing (please stop using a "k", you're triggering me), but it wouldn't be anywhere near the volume currently experienced. There is still legal responsibility for the waste, because waste generators are responsible from cradle to grave. I really don't know if the earthquakes are the legal responsibility of waste generators, that seems like quite the stretch. Much of the peer reviewed literature on injection disposal seems to indicate that the lack of state regulation on proximity of injection operations (within the same target formation) is the issue. There are limits to volume rates per facility, but no thought is put into how these facilities pressurize the formation overall. There could definitely be fracing with very little fluid disposal. In the Appalachian basin, it is pretty common practice to mix off production water into the next frac. It doesn't totally eliminate the need (due to TNORM or components that may interfere with completions), but it is significantly reduced. Why this isn't done in OK, I have no idea. I don't have experience there.
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Jan 14, 2016 17:18
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Trabisnikof posted:Pretty sure a big issue in OK is that the basin is very wet, so they may already be mixing production water back into the next frac, but there just is too much water to use up. But I may be mixing up drunken conversations in my memory. It is definitely possible. Especially with the recent downturn causing completion projects to dry up. Again, I don't know about that particular region's issues.
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Jan 14, 2016 17:34
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Well, there's a difference between is and ought. If it can be shown that the waste water disposal is shown to be the likely cause of some earthquakes then clearly they should be held legally responsible. I guess you're free to believe that. The cumulative formation impact that is causing this is not really a problem the waste generator can control though, especially when there are many entities dealing with each other. The only way to solve it by blaming fracing would be to have some sort of organized distribution of waste with allocations per facility. It sounds really convulted and it would be much easier to regulate disposal wells better. Mozi posted:Thanks, that was informative. This is actually the first time I've seen it referred to as 'fracing,' so the industry has a ways to go in pushing that nomenclature... PR for E&P companies is terrible.
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Jan 14, 2016 21:53
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It's not dumping waste. It's literally the safest way to dispose of fluid waste. Let's look at the current issue in OK. Each disposal facility has limits on how much they can pump (I'm not sure if this is a volume restriction or a pressure restriction in OK). The idea is that the fluid pumped downhole has to difuse throughout the formation so that the pore pressure (the pressure the fluid exerts) does not overcome the confining pressure enough to allow movement. This is okay when there isn't a huge volume being disposed because it never reached the point where it caused a lot of earthquakes. The problem is in the interwell formation. When multiple wells in proximity pump at there maximum allowed rate and the fluid diffuses throughout the formation, it creates higher than expected pressures in the space between the wells. In your scenario, where the generators are the responsible party, each generator has to know all the fluid going to the facilities they use, as well as all of the other facilities fluid volumes. Short of some sort of collusion to shut out some wells (which is illegal) waste generators don't have the tools to even deal with this issue. It's going to be much more effective to have regulation on injection wells.
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Jan 14, 2016 22:19
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Still not sure how this changes the fact that their collective actions cause earthquakes. Like, I get that the whole regulatory structure around the thing isn't great, but lack of proper regulations shouldn't be the same as lack of responsibility. It's really easy to get caught up in a fervor to "make em pay", but what mechanism are you going to do that with? They didn't operate the injection wells, so they aren't directly responsible. They had no control over that process. They're still liable for that waste if is released, but I doubt you could make that stick for earthquakes. However, I get that is not what you're saying. You're saying out of some sort of fairness, they should pay. Although, out of the same idea of fairness, they had no ability, mechanism, or recourse to prevent this issue in the first place. If you don't like oil and gas, in general, you can argue that point separate from this issue. It just doesn't seem to hold up here.
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Jan 14, 2016 22:44
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Trabisnikof posted:But it is a real question if all states are ready to regulate such a complex process, especially in states without a history of O&G development. Small, fly-by-night operators can do real damage when local regulators can't or won't regulate effectively. I think it might be a little backwards here. Regulations in relatively new boom states like PA and OH are have MUCH stricter regulations than OK and TX. There is a reason TAFT (This aint loving texas) is a phrase. Also, unconventional operations really can't be fly by night. A single well is going to require over 5.5 million in initial investment. Any company willing to put that kind of investment isn't fly by night. The mom and pop operators of conventional assest have much lower oversight because it isn't the focus of public afternoon and therefore get away with murder. The PA threshold for reporting of fluid release to ground is 3 gallons in a 24 hour period. Most fluids in that quantity do not even have a real environmental impact.
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Jan 15, 2016 21:04
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Trabisnikof posted:Those regulations were passed after the industry hosed up already in many instances. There weren't prexisiting regulations in place when the basins we're opening up. Off the top of my head I can't think of any states that had no oil and gas extraction prior to the advent of unconventionals. I get your point though, those regulations were not capable of handling the new boom so I will shut up about that. Trabisnikof posted:You're forgetting it's a complex supply chain. Sure, the whole operation is more complex than just sticking a pumpjack somewhere so maybe fly by night wasn't correct. But even small and medium sized operators have huge incentives to cut corners in this price environment. Then we get the contractors who can be even more incentivized to cut costs. The water trucking company, the injection well owners, the man camp with an illegal septic system, etc. All related to develop and in need of regulation. A 'small' operator is still going to have to be a company with market cap/potential market of 50-100 million dollars. Having worked for both a large independent and a small company, there isn't a huge difference other than large companies spend money on a lot of stuff that isn't useful. On site activities are the responsibility of the operator. I'm not sure where you are going with regulating contractors outside of existing regulation framework (DOT, code enforcement, etc). E:v can you source that? I'm not a seismologist, but short of that earthquake originating directly under the structure and the structure having a terrible foundation, it seems an exaggeration. Otherwise magnitude 4-5 earthquakes (10-100 times more powerful) would have brought down every brick building in OK at this point. JohnGalt fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Jan 15, 2016 |
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Jan 15, 2016 22:24
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Volkerball posted:What research has been done that connects fracking to earthquakes, and if there is a connection, is it inherent to fracking or is the problem also present in non-fracked wells? I'm on my phone so I don't have any papers handy at the moment, but il do my best. There is no potential for earthquakes in non fraced wells. The mechanism for earthquakes is increasing pore pressure in formations, this is done by pumping fluid into the rock. Without fracing the well, you are not increasing pore pressure, in fact you are reducing pore pressure (allowing formation fluids to escape up the wellbore). Fracing earthquakes has some tenuous links to seismicity, at best. The links are nowhere near what injection wells are and the reason is pretty simple. Fracing pumps water into shale formations (which dont allow fluid to easily flow throughout the formation) and any increased pressure on the formation is released when the well is opened up for production. Also, because it is a shale formation, wells next to each other do not interact a whole lot. Injection wells on the other hand, are pumping fluid into formations which are permeable (fluid freely moves through the formation) so nearby wells can interact with each other. Also, fluid in the formation is supposed to remain down there. So fluid requires time to disperse and formation pressures to equalize. I don't think I used any technical terms, but it I glazed over anything please feel free to ask me to explain.
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Jan 15, 2016 23:19
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Volkerball posted:This makes sense. All of the issues I'd heard of regarding fracking were generally about pollution in the water table due to things like cracked casings that you can get in non-fracked wells, so I was a bit surprised to hear talk about earthquakes since it's just using water to break up shale to release natural gas. I can see how an injection well would be a different scenario though. Thanks. I don't know if 'cracked' casing is the right word. The pathways for fluid migration are either in poor cement around the casing which can allow fluid to migrate along the outside of the borehole. Also, casing can be corroded (more common in wells older than 40 years old). The corroded casing issues could be resolved by have companies bond wells so that there is money to plug them at the end of their life cycle (in the case that the well lasts longer than the company). Poor cement jobs are much less common than they used to be, mostly because no one required ceent returns or bond logs to make sure the cement was good, because no one cared. Celot posted:hah WTI is more expensive than Brent now. I was sweating bullets for a while. Now I know my company can remain solvent for 2 years, so I'm getting my MBA part time. I think I want out of the industry, but no one pays nearly as well for what I do. JohnGalt fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Jan 15, 2016 |
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Jan 15, 2016 23:43
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Celot posted:Split collars aren't too uncommon. There's a whole suite of casing evaluation services that use ultrasound or the Hall effect to evaluate casing thickness (and therefore damage/corrosion). Fair enough, I only set outer casing depths I don't deal with actually cementing it. Cement is a whole lot less important than setting surface and intermediate casing in the right zone to prevent annular migration anyways. Squalid posted:Containment ponds pose a greater risk of groundwater contamination than the wells themselves, at least in Western PA where those are common. There were also reported cases of trunks transporting fluids just dumping it local creeks, in one case this caused a salinity spike which allowed an invasive algae imported from Texas to proliferate and release toxic metabolites, killing almost everything in the river. Pretty much this. Brine impoundments are bad. Also, that trucking company is bad. OH outlawed brine impoundments.
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Jan 16, 2016 02:44
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achillesforever6 posted:A lot of this poo poo seems to because these assholes are lazy/cheap. So lazy is kind of insulting. There was a learning curve for everyone on this thing. Brine impoundments were the answer to what the hell do we do with this fluid? The industry didnt know if it could be reused, treated, or disposed of effectively. At the end of the day, the primary contaminant is salt (which isn't a serious contaminant). Cheap is true, there is a motivation to cut costs, but the state has handed down several serious fines for leaking impoundments (even loving freshwater ones, which is complete bullshit) and operators have taken steps to correct.
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Jan 17, 2016 02:08
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rscott posted:Idk maybe you should like, have a plan in place to dispose of your environmentally harmful waste before you start using it, that seems like the non lazy thing to do to me. State DOT sprays it on the road (literally do this with convential well flowback) so I guess that should be a legitimate option.
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Jan 17, 2016 02:44
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Trabisnikof posted:In someways but not others. Its great if you own a man-camp, not so great if your roads are ruined by trucks and you can't drive when it rains. Its great for the truck stop but not so great for the kids at the county park. In Appalachian basin, most (if not all) states require roads to be bonded prior to use. Every utilized road is repaired after (and during) that period. God help you if one of your subs tries to use the first 50ft of an unbonded road to to turn around because you're going to be slammed with a mid five figure fine. Mercury_Storm posted:Also not so great when the Governor gives his new oil pals insane deals so they pay extremely low to no taxes. I'm sure the local Hilton gets a big influx of cash, but lol. I would like to see these no tax states. If you're talking about PA, it sure is a shame that the impact tax is only distributed to impacted rural areas instead of being diverted to those big cities who have no skin in the game.
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Jan 22, 2016 13:30
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 19:40 |
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Haha I just was told that there is no bonus this year (expected) and my stock was going to be issued at twenty times current market value. I guess I can go buy lunch when it finally vests.
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Jan 26, 2016 18:58
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