Fracking Industry Analysis

Only commercialized in the United States about five or six years ago, a new process of extracting natural gas has emerged called fracking. The natural gas that is extracted from the shale can be into the thousands of feet below the earth’s surface. This new process gives us the opportunity to extract gas that we thought was unreachable through relatively new technological advancements in the field. The concept of horizontal drilling was part of how the United States got to the concept of fracking today. In 1993, the idea of horizontal drilling was fairly new; even the Energy Information Association (EIA) struggled to be able to put together a “widely accepted definition” of what horizontal drilling was. The EIA went on to publish a combination

These rigs have the capability of drilling down into the earth’s surface thousands of feet to then be able to drill horizontally. After they have drilled these horizontal pathways to the shale, then they are able to start fracking. Helmerich & Payne describes their new drill’s capabilities on the companies website by saying, “the AC drive and top drive operating system enables the drill string to be electronically controlled from a computer touch-screen in the driller’s cabin, resulting in drilling efficiencies for customers, particularly when drilling complex unconventional horizontal wells.” The technology in these rigs could be huge in the near future for the United States as we continue to lessen our reliance on the OPEC countries and especially Saudi Arabia for oil. This top drive flexrig is a state of the art drilling rig that lets the operator not only drill horizontally thousands of feet below the surface, but you can drill many legs to the well that offer much greater production all coming through one wellhead. It's important to understand that the improved technologies will be a significant game changer in the long run because they will be able to drive down the cost of each barrel that is

Once metric was that the use of only 10 percent more sand per foot of drilling produced 60 percent more oil. In addition to using more sand and pressure there are other techniques that are being used to improve output. Two horizontal wells in close proximity have been show to yield twice the production because the lateral lines are only a few feet from one another so they work to help each other loosen the oil from the shale. Shale drillers in the Permian Basin and at the Eagle Ford Formation both in Texas as also using what they call stacked laterals where wells are drilled side by side and then move laterally underground creating multiple tiers; this is also done at the Bakken formation in North Dakota. Also according to geologist Mr. Badiali, some of these techniques have increased production as follows, 280% in the Niobrara Field in Colorado, 168% in the Marcellus Field in Pennsylvania, 140% Eagle Ford in Texas, 137% in the Bakken in North Dakota. This encouraging statistics are all from Mr. Badiali’s hardcopy newsletter "The Next Phase of The US Shale Boom" from the S&A