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Page added on October 8, 2014
‘Sweet Spot’ Technology Could Cut Fracking 30-50%
An entrepreneur with roots in coalbed methane and his company are seeking collaborators to further test a technology that detects, identifies and quantifies hydrocarbons in shale oil and gas wells.
Laramie, WY-based WellDog has been working with Royal Dutch Shell plc to adapt for shale oil and gas applications WellDog’s Raman spectroscopy technology, which it and its customers have been using in coalbed methane plays for years. The technology can find the “sweet spot” in shale plays and tell how much gas and natural gas liquids are present, WellDog CEO John Pope told NGI’s Shale Daily.
The sweet spot technology can tell operators where to land their laterals and could lead to a 30-50% reduction in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) stages and fluid use, Pope said, citing industry studies of late that have shown that distribution of gas in shales can be highly variable, leading to variable production results.
“It’s pretty simple,” he said. “This is a science that’s been around for a very long time. It’s called Raman spectroscopy. Sir [C.V.] Raman got the Nobel [Prize in physics] for it in 1930. It has not been used widely outside of the laboratory until the last decade or so. We are the only company that’s taken a Raman spectrometer and packaged it into a format where it can be used downhole.”
WellDog’s tool shines a laser at a molecule and detects the color change in the photon that bounces off the molecule because some of its energy was absorbed into the molecule. “So if you look at the color change that happens during that process, you can see what the characteristic excitation energy of the molecule is — in other words what the color is of that molecule — and that tells you what the molecule is. And also the number of photons that change in color tells you how many of those molecules are there. So you can both identify and quantify the gasses that are present,” Pope said.
So far, WellDog and Shell have focused on applying the technology to finding gas and determining whether it is wet or dry. This is a “simple extension” of what WellDog has been doing in coalbed methane in the Powder River Basin, Pope said. “The next work that we have under way right now is to extend it to oil versus wet gas and condensate.”
Pope conceded that WellDog isn’t the first to take a crack at applying Raman’s technology in the oil and gas patch.
“There have been many other people that have tried this, and to our knowledge none of them have been successful,” he said. “The fact is, this measurement is highly demanding because not only do you have to create a sensor that can go into these environments, it has to measure things reliably and accurately in an oilfield environment, which can be very challenging from an engineering standpoint.
“You also have to be able to understand what you’re measuring in terms of what the sample is that you’re seeing and where it came from. And then you have to understand what that measurement means in terms of the reservoir physics and what the measurement is representing in terms of actionable data that can help an operator make different choices.”
WellDog was formed in 1999 by Pope, who has a doctorate in physical chemistry, after he had worked with his geophysicist uncle on exploring natural gas hydrates in the Gulf of Mexico. They had looked over a proposal from the Russian Academy of Sciences for using a Raman spectrometer to explore hydrates. “In the end, we decided that there was a better way to do that,” Pope said. “I started WellDog in order to pursue that.”
Rather than continuing to travel from Wyoming to the Gulf of Mexico and look for gas hydrates, Pope decided to package the technology into a wireline tool that could be deployed to look for natural gas in the nearby Powder River Basin. “In the coalbed methane area, we became so good at [detecting gas] that, for example, reserves auditors would use our numbers for booking SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] assets.” Pope said.
While Pope and WellDog were plying the coals, shale players for the last 10 years or so were asking for the technology to be adapted for their use. “We’ve worked on it off and on over that time,” Pope said. “These last two years we’ve completed that adaptation with Shell.
“The shale operators that have asked for this help have come from every basin and every type of shale. Our sense is that this variability in hydrocarbons, this variability in gas occurrence, is endemic across all shales.”
Beta trials of the technology are ongoing with one well in the Marcellus Shale. WellDog plans to try it out on other wells in other shales.
“…[W]e’re inviting the rest of the industry to join us in those trials,” Pope said. “So as soon as we test enough wells that we understand all of the performance envelope of the sensor in this application and that we can reliably generate data that can help the operators find their pay zones, that’s when we’ll be commercial.” He said costs for using the technology are not yet known, but they will be “small compared to the cost of a well that is not productive.”
Application of the sweet spot technology has relevance from the exploration phase all the way through development, Pope said. “Carbonaceous deposits like shales and coals inherently have heterogeneities in the reservoir that are widespread. And as a result, the exploration and appraisal phase measurements typically do not indicate production success.
“Another way to say that is that you never really end exploration when you’re developing these reservoirs…The need for a sensor that can tell you where the gas is or the oil is, is no smaller later on when you’re optimizing than it is early on when you’re exploring.”
Besides the Powder River and Marcellus, WellDog has worked in the Permian Basin, Eagle Ford and Bakken shales and in the Niobrara Formation. Internationally, the company has been active in Australia since 2010 as well as in New Zealand, Canada, China and Mozambique.
Prior to working with his uncle on hydrates, Pope was a professor in Tokyo working on battery materials; he later started a battery company in Wyoming and by now has started a few companies, ranging from high tech to low tech.
On the low-tech side, there’s a Laramie, WY, steakhouse called Calvaryman, in which he is a partner. Pope also is a partner in a company called Centennial Woods, which reclaims old snowfence in Wyoming and repurposes it for planking, siding and flooring. These enterprises, WellDog and others that are engaged in fuel cells, nanomaterials and carbon sequestration are part of privately held The Blue Sky Group, which focuses on technology and green businesses.
22 Comments on "‘Sweet Spot’ Technology Could Cut Fracking 30-50%"
steve on Wed, 8th Oct 2014 10:26 am
Alright!! Two more years!!! of BAU
apneaman on Wed, 8th Oct 2014 1:06 pm
Oh but it was just a matter of time, wasn’t it. I shall be highly entertained hearing all the fracking freaks minimize, deny, rationalize and spin spin spin.
Confirmed: California Aquifers Contaminated With Billions Of Gallons of Fracking Wastewater
http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/10/07/central-california-aquifers-contaminated-billions-gallons-fracking-wastewater
rockman on Wed, 8th Oct 2014 1:20 pm
I wasn’t familiar with the Raman spectroscopy system. It might work just as it’s described. But so what? If you read their website the process involves first drilling a straight hole and running the tool to know if this is a “sweet spot”. Well hell….once you have a hole in the ground there are a number of logging tools you can run. Even more important by drilling a straight hole thru the shale formation you typically know you’ve hit a sweet spot from the well bore response while you are drilling. I’ll skip those details but that methodology was proven many decades ago
“The sweet spot technology can tell operators where to land their laterals and could lead to a 30-50% reduction in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) stages”. Yeah…because they just drilled a well at that spot. At first I thought this was going to be some sort of geophysical method to ID the fracture systems before you drill. But there’s an even bigger problem: they drill a straight hole, run their RS and it says this is a good spot. But that “good spot” has a diameter of about 8”. EFS laterals are thousands of feet long. The article even makes the point about the heterogeneity of the shales and that one cannot project productivity very far. They don’t say it but I gather they aren’t talking about drilling one straight hole to use as a target for a horizontal but drill a grid of straight holes to map out the sweet spot. Straight drilled deep enough to evaluate the EFS are cheaper than a hz hole…but they are not cheap.
I think this fellow may have had success using this system to map out sweet spots in shallow CBM plays. But those straight pilot holes would cost a great deal less than an EFS straight hole so it might have been cost efficient. Maybe there’s something important they aren’t telling us. But from what I’ve read on their website I see little chance of this being a practical approach.
apneaman on Wed, 8th Oct 2014 2:45 pm
Central Valley groundwater tainted by illegal injections of oil and gas industry wastewater
http://summitcountyvoice.com/2014/10/07/more-fracking-pollution-woes-in-california/
Heaven forbid the criminal poisoning of people and their kids, pets should get in the way of “sweet spots”.
Nony on Wed, 8th Oct 2014 3:26 pm
Steve:
It sounds like for a lot of peakers, they were not so much scared of peak oil running out, but welcoming/hoping it would run out. And bumming for every increase in production.
Nony on Wed, 8th Oct 2014 3:31 pm
Rock: I agree that deciding the location of the frack stages would be very useful. Not sure why they don’t posit that.
Looking at the article and the company website (http://www.welldog.com/reservoir-raman-spectroscopy/), the Raman application is pretty nascent. They are trying to figure out where/how to use it. Is it for coalbeds or natural gas shale, landing the horizontal or spacing the fracks.
It sure doesn’t read is if this is a well tested tool where they know how to use it. Nothing wrong with that and great that they can work with Shell a bit to run some tests. But it’s just an idea at this stage.
Northwest Resident on Wed, 8th Oct 2014 3:51 pm
Nony — What you detect are probably a lot of the peakers wishing that the show would just get started — much like those soldiers who eventually landed on the Normandy beaches during D-Day just wanted to hurry up and get on with it, knowing that they HAD to do it, that there was NO CHOICE, that they were prepared as best as they could be for it, that the inevitable reality was there waiting to be met. In that sense, yes, a lot of peakers are just wanting to get this long drawn-out period of excessive environmental and human waste behind them. They may also be a little eager to see fracking pollution halted, to try to put a stop to the daily human-driven extinction of animal species. Maybe they would like to put a stop to all the massive carbon pollution sooner rather than later. Maybe they know that every day another umpteen million babies are born that have very little chance of any kind of a “good” life. Maybe the peakers care a lot more about nature and humanity and what is right than the fracking and BAU-forever-and-at-whatever-cost cheerleaders do.
drwater on Wed, 8th Oct 2014 3:57 pm
In response to apneaman:
The denial was in the very same article you referenced:
“No contamination has actually been found in any drinking or irrigation water, but, according to The Bakersfield Californian, “Pollution has not been ruled out”.
Seem like the crux of the matter is that really salty aquifers, which had been exempt from some water quality standards because they were considered unusable, are now being considered for protection.
Davy on Wed, 8th Oct 2014 4:45 pm
NR, well put summary of the “doomer dread”. Noo, I am not looking forward to this crisis period. Life is so good for me now. I am in a good place with what I need for happiness. I live a simple and satisfying life. I know this good life won’t be as good in a time of less with less. Spiritually I look forward to this crisis period in some ways. I have a general sense of mental unease every time I do something modern knowing it is harming nature. Generating trash just by trying to eat. The commute in a car spewing carbon just because of a small modern life necessity. On and on and on the sins of modern man accumulate. So in that aspect I have a general feeling of I want these sins against nature to end. I appreciate moderates here in both flavors. I need moderating influence from the doomers and the corns who show less alarm. I admit I may be too extreme sometimes though I feel like a doomer/prepper (lite). Noo, you are a bit cavalier you could use a dose of doom.
apneaman on Wed, 8th Oct 2014 4:49 pm
Why not provide the link? Too much effort?
“The Center obtained a letter from the State Water Resources Control Board to the Environmental Protection Agency. The letter says that the Central Valley Regional Water Board has confirmed that injection wells have been dumping oil industry waste into aquifers that are legally protected under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. ”
“The Central Valley Water Board tested eight water-supply wells out of more than 100 in the vicinity of these injection wells. Arsenic, nitrate and thallium exceeded the maximum contaminant level in half the water samples.”
http://www.wateronline.com/doc/documents-reveal-billions-oil-industry-wastewater-illegally-injected-aquifers-0001
I guess arsenic has a salty flavor.
Nony on Wed, 8th Oct 2014 4:51 pm
Brent is under 90.
I think more and more the price problems (even of 30 versus 100) are not so much related to peaker “running out”, but to the demand increases from China.
If we were really “running out”, price would be increasing, not holding steady or even going down.
P.s. where is the economic discussion within Hubbert. He screwed up BAD. What a commie moron. HAHAHAHA.
Northwest Resident on Wed, 8th Oct 2014 5:17 pm
Nony — Maybe businesses and CEOs know:
1) That we’re running out of oil
2) That launching any major initiatives to earn profit the old fashioned way is a waste of time
And so they’re just hanging out waiting for the hammer to fall like everybody else, not buying/burning as much oil as they would otherwise do.
I think you meant “demand decreases from China”. ???
Nony on Wed, 8th Oct 2014 6:13 pm
The drop in the last year could be from China demand decrease (or slow in increase). I was talking about the last decade price change.
Davy on Wed, 8th Oct 2014 6:23 pm
Damn, Noo, do you read financial news on the economy? You are one confused little puppy with your above comment. Wake up son before it is too late.
drwater on Wed, 8th Oct 2014 6:25 pm
apneaman,
So let’s go straight to the data instead of the bullshit fear rags you are quoting.
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/california_fracking/pdfs/UIC_WaterWell_Results_8-7-14.xlsx
All the measurements for total SVOCs in the 8 wells are non-detect. There is some TPH above a secondary standard in one well. Could easily be leakage from a source above, especially since it is getting picked up in the refined products tests.
The nitrate in some wells is from farming, NOT injection wells.
From Wikipedia:
“Thallium is a modestly abundant element in the Earth’s crust, with a concentration estimated to be about 0.7 mg/kg,[21] mostly in association with potassium-based minerals in clays, soils, and granites..”
Arsenic is also naturally occurring up and down the California Central Valley, especially the west side. There are 2 wells above the new maximum level but below the old maximum allowable level of a few years ago. Arsenic by itself is not indicative of contamination by injection wells. Arsenic can become more mobile in the presence of reducing conditions, which can be caused by hydrocarbon leakage, but that is a very uncommon condition compared with the natural arsenic we find all over the west side of the California Central Valley.
Oil and gas companies have been deep injecting produced water for many decades into deep brine aquifers. It is nothing new.
Can there be problems with an improperly completed injection well – sure. Is the data presented evidence of that – NO!
apneaman on Wed, 8th Oct 2014 10:59 pm
Which parts of this quote don’t you understand? They dumped it into the aquifers you fucking cock-a-roach shill.
“The Center obtained a letter from the State Water Resources Control Board to the Environmental Protection Agency. The letter says that the Central Valley Regional Water Board has confirmed that injection wells have been dumping oil industry waste into aquifers that are legally protected under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. ”
simonr on Thu, 9th Oct 2014 12:22 am
Nony …. Bumpy Plateau … nuff said
yoananda on Thu, 9th Oct 2014 3:01 am
Nony :
oil prices are the signs DEMAND is running out, which is THE sign of peak oil !!
rockman on Thu, 9th Oct 2014 8:18 am
yoananda – Save your breath. LOL. As I’ve said in the past: IMHO the booming shale plays (as a result of higher oil prices) are the best evidence of the PO path we’re heading down.
Nony on Thu, 9th Oct 2014 10:17 am
Yonanda: If you were right, volume would be down. It’s not.
Rock: as usual, you bring up a side point and repeat yourself. Stick to being a so-so and dated geologist. You’re not an analyst. [And I agree that shale is not economic at lower prices, but we are discussing the drop from 120 to 90 over last 2 years, not the rise from 30 to 90 over last 10. Also…how many peakers predicted the shale boom (donut hole!) How many peakers (Rune, Picollo, Berman, commenters here, etc.) talked down the shale boom as it started.
Northwest Resident on Thu, 9th Oct 2014 10:57 am
Nony — The net energy gained from “the shale boom” is nearly insignificant to the energy needs of the world. The “shale boom” has kept a lot of oil workers very gainfully employed, it has kept the refineries busy, it has kept the financial hound dogs howling, it has kept the investment advisors pitching the great investment returns on shale oil talking, it has kept the “total barrels of crude” production on an upward slant for now, it has given the propaganda creators useful material around which to spin their lies and fantasies, and it has given shale cheerleaders like you something to crow about. BUT, what it has NOT done, is give the world enough extra energy to make any difference whatsoever, and it NEVER will.
Davy on Thu, 9th Oct 2014 12:08 pm
Noo, if you consider yourself an analyst I feel for the poor people being advised. Most analyst are like hookers and tell you what you want to hear until they get paid.