Natural Gas Says: Fracc You Peak Oil!
Brian Westenhaus reports some good energy news from the natural gas front. It involves a method of enhancing natural gas wells called "fraccing", or fracturing rock layers to provide better gas access. North America has abundant natural gas resources -- particularly if you include the methane hydrates of the far North.
...oil and gas service businesses have invented a rock fracturing technique for deep below the surface. Called fracing for short, the technique quite simply uses raw power to force water, sand and specialized chemical solvents, binders and lubricants into the wells so they open and fill cracks that can allow the natural gas to flow out.Brian Wang also reports some encouraging energy news: a new technique of oil recovery promises 400 billion more barrels of Alberta oil at a cost of $26 per barrel!
...[Along] with methane hydrates and new biomass sources, natural gas has a bright future. There is an existing infrastructure for moving gas; a huge installed base of users and it’s the least contentious fossil carbon fuel. Its pretty good stuff, and the cost to use it isn’t threatened by anyone but the U.S. Congress with its Cap and Trade suicide pact.
There are careers here that will last for decades. Of all the fossil carbon sources natural gas is the least risky for U.S. production of fuels. Oil and particularly coal are in danger with grave consequences in store for consumers as the hysteria over global warming from CO2 continues to drive politics, muckraking ands profiteering by its promoters. Even if Congress abandons the common welfare for the perceptions and subversions of special interests, natural gas will be the least affected. _NewEnergyandFuel
ET Energy's Electro Thermal technology could be used to pump out 600 billion barrels of Alberta's oil sands bitumen. That's more than triple the Alberta government's best guess at what's currently recoverable from the oil sands, and enough to satisfy total global demand for twenty years.Cross posted to Al Fin Energy
Saudi Arabia has 260 billion barrels of oil reserves, so the additional 421 billion barrels would be close to double the oil in Saudi Arabia.
_NextBigFuture
Labels: natural gas, oil production, peak oil
posted by al fin at 3:16 am
4 Comments:
Maybe this will be good news for my province, Alberta, that has a lot of Frac companies that have recently had to lay off workers. My SO is a truck driver and involved somewhat with helping the Frac crews. There are literally thousands of wells just around my small city alone, in fact mine is called The Gas City for Natural Gas ;) Maybe we will see an up to combat the downtime that oil is bringing us lately.
In the 1970's the US government used small nuclear explosives to fracture underground rock in order to free trapped gas. Its amazing that the US went from technophilic to technophobic in less than 40 years. Really, the transition was complete by 1985-1990, just 20 years. We can thank the media for all of this brainwashing, which is yet another reason to privatize the radio spectrum.
You should do a post on the economic benefits of privatizing the airwaves.
KC: I think that natural gas will survive the Obama energy inquisition better than coal and oil sands. So Alberta natural gas wells should do fine.
Ron: Nuclear fraccing may be more than these gas men are ready for right now.
I hope so. It's a very dangerous business, this Frac-ing, and a lot of people are needed to run things smoothly and safely so that should hopefully keep people in a fair few number of jobs.
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