![]() ![]() The panel tackling this issue is made up of representatives from the major industry players, including Shell, BP, and XTO, the subsidiary of ExxonMobil that operated the blown well in Ohio. The Society of Petroleum Engineers itself will be discussing this issue at its February 6 meeting in Texas during a three-hour panel called ” Casing Deformation in Unconventionals: Case Histories, Root-Causes, Managing and Mitigating.” This is not some fringe issue for independent operators. Credit: Environmental Protection Agency, public domainĪccording to the Society of Petroleum Engineers paper, produced by petroleum engineer Neal Adams and others, casing failures have been linked to the stresses and high pressures required to complete the fracking process and the industry is grappling with this costly and hazardous problem. This paper identified the problem in depth and used strong language (for engineers), noting, “Incidents of casing failures occurring during fracture stimulation operations are increasing at an alarming rate.”įor an industry laser-focused on cutting costs, the risk of losing an entire fracking well gets its attention. Representation of a horizontally drilled and hydraulically fractured natural gas well, with the cycle of water involved. This is accomplished by pumping a mixture of water, chemicals, and sand under such high pressure that it breaks apart the rock, creating fractures that allow trapped oil and gas to flow up the well to the surface. The process of hydraulic fracturing is what releases the oil and gas from the shale. The well’s vertical portion is made up of several layers of steel pipe casing and cement that are designed to protect nearby groundwater from the oil, gas, and fracking fluids that pass through the well. While a fracked well is initially drilled vertically like a conventional well, at a certain point, the well bore turns and drills horizontally for distances up to 20,000 feet (that’s nearly four miles). Wells used to produce oil and gas via fracking are different from what are known as “conventional,” or traditionally drilled, oil wells. The results of these failures can be catastrophic, as a 2017 paper published by the Society of Petroleum Engineers spells out: “Outcomes from casing failures include blowouts, pollution, injuries/fatalities, and loss of the well with associated costs.” The cause of this massive leak was a failure of the gas well’s casing, or internal lining. Well casing failures represent yet another significant but not widely discussed technical problem for an unprofitable fracking industry.Ĭasing failures occur when the steel or cement that’s lining an oil or gas well breaks or cracks, which means the well can’t maintain pressure anymore and creates a pathway for anything inside the well - such as fracking fluids - to leak into the surrounding environment. They can take place, as in the example of Exxon’s gas well in Ohio, at sites where hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is happening. The New York Times reported in December that new satellite data revealed that this single gas well leaked more methane in 20 days than an entire year’s worth of methane released by the oil and gas industries in countries like Norway and France. On February 15, 2018, a fracked natural gas well owned by ExxonMobil’s XTO Energy and located in southeast Ohio experienced a well blowout, causing it to gush the potent greenhouse gas methane for nearly three weeks. The obscure accident ultimately resulted in one of the biggest methane leaks in U.S.
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