Getting Bakken oil out a big, complicated operation
By ED KEMMICK
Of The Gazette Staff
At the site of the Hartland 14X-26 oil well about five miles southwest of Sidney, a whole lot of activity is packed into the 430-by-300-foot patch of prairie.
There are seven semitrucks, each mounted with a 2,200-horsepower engine, 56 tanks of water containing nearly 17,000 gallons of water each, and two boxcar-sized containers full of fine sand. Another tanker truck is loaded with gel, and three truck-mounted cranes stand by, ready to hoist and move innumerable pieces of equipment, piping and lengths of heavy hose.
Also on the scene is an RV-like vehicle that houses the computerized control room where engineers and technicians keep an eye on every step of the operation. Working the site is a crew of 16.
They work for a French oil field services business, Schlumberger, which has two such teams working in the Williston Basin. One crew is based in Worland, Wyo., and the other in Williston, N.D. "That's how our neighboring states achieve over 100 percent employment," jokes Tim Lechner, a production manager for Headington Oil Co.
They are working on a "frac job," which involves fracturing layers of oil-bearing sandstone and siltstone two miles underground, in a geological stratum known as the Bakken formation.
After a vertical well is drilled to that level, the drill goes horizontal, a technique that had been used for years. In the Bakken - named for a North Dakota farmer on whose farm the shale layers were first identified in the 1950s - horizontal drilling is paired with another technique, fracturing. That involves forcing a mixture of sand, water and gel underground at enormous pressures, thanks to those banks of 2,200-horsepower pump trucks.
As the mixture shoots out of holes in the horizontal pipe, the water opens up cracks in the rock and the sand flows in behind it, holding the fractures open so oil can ooze down into the pipe - the same one used to pump in the mixture of sand and liquid - and from there to be drawn to the surface.
"It's kind of like a mining operation, in a way," Lechner said. "You need more tunnels."
In the case of the Hartland 14X-26 well, the frac crew worked for a little more than two days, pumping 700,000 gallons of water and gel and about 800,000 pounds of sand into the ground. A typical drilling unit will have as many three lateral wellbores per two sections of land, which is 1,280 acres. The perpendicular fractures run out about 50 feet on both sides of each lateral. The laterals have perforated pipes, called liners, that keep the wellbores from collapsing after the frac job.
It is an expensive proposition. Lechner said the first horizontal well he worked on for Headington in 2002 cost $2 million. The price nowadays is somewhere between $5 million and $7 million per well. But with oil at nearly $129 a barrel (with 42 gallons to the barrel), the investment is well worth it.
Indeed, the level of interest in the Williston Basin, and the booming nature of the oil business in general, is evidenced by this: At the time the Hartland 14X-26 well was being fractured, Lechner worked for Headington, a privately owned oil business. In mid-July, Headington's Montana and North Dakota assets were sold to XTO Energy of Fort Worth, Texas, in a $1.8 billion deal. XTO has also entered into an agreement to buy Hunt Petroleum Corp. for about $4.2 billion.
The deal with Headington involves 325,000 acres of Bakken shale land in North Dakota and Montana.
These days, most of the activity is in the Bakken fields of North Dakota. Production in Montana peaked at 36 million barrels of oil in 2006. That number fell to 34.8 million barrels last year.
In North Dakota, the numbers are still climbing. Production there was 35.6 million barrels in 2005, just under 40 million in 2006 and 45 million last year. In the first four months of this year, production stood at 17.2 million, putting North Dakota on track to pump more than 50 million barrels this year.
Link to article and photos:
http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2008/07/20/news/state/18-bakkenoil.txt
No but these idioitic poloiticians would rather get oil with Iraqi blood on the barrel, you know they are concerned about the environment and since in their world it is close from iraq to the US than Canada they will save money on the fuel used to transport it. The reality is that the trans gas line will add to the US reliance on canadian oil. That won't come bhack to bite you in the butt. :lol: