I am trying to discuss fracking with a friend that has little knowledge on it but I want him to be able to understand it but make it still sound technical can some of y’all help me
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First off, you need to understand that oil is not found in underground pools or caverns. It is contained within the pore spaces of what might seem like solid rock but isn’t. Think of a sandstone. It is made up of a bunch of sand grains that are stuck together. In between those individual grains is pore space. That’s where the oil and gas is found.
In good quality rock, there is enough permeability to allow the oil and gas to flow into the wellbore at commercial rates, but in poorer quality rock the flow is not enough to be economic. The oil is there, it just won’t come out.
Hydraulic fracturing (the technical term) can help free up trapped oil and gas by cracking the rock, thus connecting more of the pore space and increasing the flow rate. Basically, water mixed with sand is pumped at very high rate and pressure into the well such that the rock will fracture and the sand will pack into the cracks and prop them open, thus creating flow channels to the wellbore.
The first hydraulic fracture of a well was performed in 1948, so it’s not exactly a new practice. However, with the advent of long lateral drilling and multi-stage fracturing along the horizontal wellbore, oil and gas can now be recovered from reservoir rocks that would have simply been ignored previously, such as shale.
BTW, in case you’re wondering, I’m a recently retired engineer with 45+ years experience in the industry. I could get a lot more technical, but hopefully that will give you a basic understanding to start with.
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The frac pressures can be Astronomical. They can be over 10,000 PSI pumping down a 4” bore. (That’s an Enormous amount of sand and water being pumped into the formation). The late, great George Mitchell, envisioned this for the Barnett Shale as the best oil and gas recovery technique years ago. Before, (now termed as “conventional” drilling) we were looking for “porosity”, Not hard shale. It’s Flipped the game.
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Yeah I have recently visited a frack site but I just wanted to explain what it is to my friend without being to complicated, thank y’all
There are some good high level videos out there. This is one of them:
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