HERE IS A RECENT LETTER I POSTED FROM DALE HENRY….
“Dear Kim,
I was reading some of the Barnett report. Asking the industry to “guarantee ” that casings will last, I don’t know what length of time you are wanting.
I have always been the biggest supporter of proper and correct cementing for all casing strings. I owned a cementing business and plugged over 5,000 wells for the railroad commission. I could tell you the events over the years that would make you unbelievably mad and sick at the same time. I have seen old wells plugged with old wooden fence posts. There are still so many old abandoned wells that need to be plugged “correctly”. This leads to just one of thousands of changes that needs to be made at the RR commission.
I believe that in the permitting process that the responsibility for plugging any well given a permit, it will be the company who is applying for the permits to be responsible for plugging that well. The whole permit process is out of date and antiquated, and it favors the O&G industry every time! Today the big O&G companies drill and frack a well, they get the first 3 to 5 years of production (which is the most productive in the life of that well and profitable), then they sell out to a secondary producer. Chesapeake oil just unloaded billions of dollars of oil leases and other assets. Once the primary company sells its leases, it has no responsibility for anything, especially plugging. This has to change.
You must understand that there is no perfect well or cementing job. CEMENTING IS THE KEY TO MAKING THE WELL AS SAFE AS POSSIBLE! There are people out there that really don’t know the intimate details of how drilling and especially CEMENTING are performed and performed using the best technology that is available. The O&G industry is only concerned about their bottom line, and if an unscrupulousness drilling company chooses to use short cuts and substandard materials, YOU WILL NEVER KNOW ABOUT IT UNTIL THAT WELL FAILS, and especially since there is a very good chance that the RR commission never inspected one cementing job of casing!
You must remember (and get this into heads of the people who vote) the O&G INDUSTRY IS A “24 HOUR A DAY, 7 DAYS A WEEK INDUSTRY”! The railroad commission works ONLY 40 HOURS A WEEK 9-5 WEEKDAYS AND NO WEEKENDS. THAT MEANS THAT THE RAILROAD COMMISSION IS ONLY AVAILABLE FOR INSPECTIONS 40 HOURS A WEEK, AND THAT LEAVES THE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY A 128 HOURS A WEEK TO WORK UNIMPEDED WITH OUT ANY WORRY OF INSPECTIONS (WHICH ARE NOT BEING DONE FOR THE MOST PART). Why do you think almost all of the cementing job are performed at night? No RR inspectors are available to make sure the cement job is done correctly. Another very necessary job that ISN’T being done are the electric bond logs tests done after every cementing to verify that the cementing job is sound and correct.
There are many different things that can happen during a cementing job (due to porosity and others) that create voids in the cement, and there is no other way to tell if the cementing is 100%. If you find a void, they can locate the void from the test, then you can perforate and squeeze cement into the void and regain integrity of the cementing job. This costs extra money, so the drillers rarely do this test. THIS HAS TO CHANGE, WE MUST PERFORM ELECTRIC BOND LOG TESTS. So if your friend are upset at the wells that fail, maybe they should start to understand how the industry works especially the RR commission who is responsible for over sight!
This is another of my biggest problems with the RR commission. They do not have proper and sufficient man power organization (of course when the O&G industry has bought and paid for each and every one of the RR commissioners, they will never step up and reorganize the man-power of the RR commission). There are hundreds of major industries that operate 24 hours a day.
The RR commission must come into the present and have enough trained inspectors to be present on all cementing jobs for every well. We must have all new managers and get rid of anyone who is sitting in a convenience store playing dominoes instead of out being on the well site! WE MUST CHANGE THE RULES, NO CEMENTING WILL BE DONE UNLESS A RR COMMISSION INSPECTOR IS PRESENT, THE WHOLE DRILLING OPERATION STOPS UNTIL AN INSPECTOR IS PRESENT ON SITE.
Until you HAVE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS AND CAN BUY OUT THE O&G INDUSTRY, BUY THE POLITICIANS, BUY THE RR COMMISSION, YOU WILL NEVER CHANGE THE INDUSTRY, EXCEPT FOR ORGANIZING YOUR PEOPLE AND HAVING ENOUGH PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE AS YOU DO, SO THAT YOU CAN ELECT BETTER POLITICIANS AND RR COMMISSIONERS !
My web site lists some failure rates for wells, that fact alone should take you back. You folks in the city where the Barnett has been over drilled, should expect to begin to see some of the wells failing, slow at first and bigger later on. Of course who ever owns the well will see a definite down flow of gas production and a definite down flow of profits. At some point, unless a 3rd or 4th owner for the well can be found, the well will have to be plugged properly. You would know this if the well is being inspected by the RR commission. The RR commission is the KEY here, throughout the life of the well and long after if the well is not plugged properly.
One thing that has always bothered me, the people in the city (and anywhere they’re leasing land for wells) are the first to run up with pen in hand to sign on the dotted line and start collecting royalty checks, and not one ever thinks about the eventual and probable harm to them and their neighbors. More over gas wells have a short life for the most part, and you don’t get a check forever! So is the little wealth they may gain worth the harm to our environment? So is this greed any better than the sold out politician who takes campaign finance from the O&G industry to get a seat on the RR commission? I have absolutely no sympathy for the people of fort worth (and anywhere else, for that matter) that were blinded by the money and now have to live with the harm and conditions left by the gas wells, you sleep with dogs you get fleas!
Lastly, injection well are not the cause of the earth quakes. You have a heard of so called experts jumping up and down, about injection wells, and these people know absolutely nothing about injections wells. Hydraulic fracturing must be studied with super high flow rates, huge transfers of water weight in a very short time, and much more. Until these so called experts and college professors, EPA investigators, have been on site all over the world in every sort of conditions, studied and know all about the process, they are just glorified neofites trying to get a headline!”
What if the drillers were mandated to video tape the cement coming back up the annulus?
Dear Kim,
Thank you for the mail.
I believe that any documentation for the actual over sight of cementing all casing strings (seeing cement actually circulate to the top), will be valuable to the people of the state of texas.
One of the many things the RR commission lacks is competent management at the top (commissioners), that the whole chain of over sight by the inspectors and managers, must be reviewed for competence, experience, and the ability to perform the job. We need more training from top to bottom, especially the manager (any manager found in a convenience store playing dominos (that should on the job checking on the inspectors and making sure the over sight if performed correctly), should be fired on the spot!
Managers must be rotated to other districts to prevent the contamination from perks, favors, and gifts from the oil and gas industry.
If we ARE EVER GOING TO compliant in OVER SIGHT FOR ALL DRILLING OPERATIONS, we must ADD PERSONNEL AND WORK 3 SHIFTS TO BE AVAILABLE 24 HOURS A DAY to be able to BE ON SITE DURING ALL CEMENTING JOBS! There must be huge fines and penalties for noncompliance by the oil and gas industry.
The oil and gas industry does not want any changes, that is why they buy off candidates like Craddick (and the other commissioners), with millions in campaign finance every election cycle.
The RR commission needs an over haul from top to bottom.
Kim, thank you for all your help and the help of others in your sphere of influence, that will get out and vote. Time is running out and I have a full schedule to meet up to the election.
Also, I put an article up on my Dale Henry Facebook page about earthquakes (see below*), and it has a lot of information and numbers. Few people, especially the so called experts, PhD’s, scientists, media types, have the slightest clue what happens during a hydraulic fracture job. These scientist and PhD’s have no experience in the field, therefore they just plain don’t understand the magnitude of the forces involved in a hydraulic fracture job! They are so far off on their speculation that injection wells are the cause, that all I can do is just LAUGH!
These earthquakes are a warning, we need to study the relationships of over drilling the Barnett shale and hydraulic fracturing wells in proximity to each other in given areas (especially places like air ports, power plants, tall buildings and structures).
Too much to do in such a short time.
Regards,
Dale
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*I took this from Dale Henry‘s lastest posthttps://www.facebook.com/dale.henry.900?fref=ts Dale writes…….
A, plus/minus 150,000 barrels per month(using a number from Mr. Frohlick and study)
B. 30 days per month equates to 5000 barrels/ day
C. 24 hours per day equates to 208 barrels per hour
D. 208 barrels per hour will be 3.5 barrels per minute.(remember this number)2.) Hydraulic Fracturing treatment
A. 100 barrels per minute or 28.5 times the injection well rate per minute
B. 200 barrels per minute or 57 times the injections well rate per minute
These rates are variable and necessary to hydraulic fracture3.) What else to initially compare other than pump rates!
A. Time
B. Pressure
C. Porosity and permeability
D. Volume
4.) Energy
A. Mass= Gallons (M)
B. Water=pounds per gallon(C)
C. E=MC squared
D. Hydraulic horse-power = gallons per minute times pressure divided by 1713.6
or
barrels per minute times pressure divided by 40.8, some very large number for the forces involved!
5.) Conclusion: Pumping of hydraulic fracturing fluids initiates and creates earth quakes, not injection of small volumes of fluid over a long interval of time in injection wells!
The railroad commission among all of its short comings, is not studying the effects of over drilling in close proximity to other gas wells in a given area.
You must remember: most of these wells are hydraulically fractured many times, some as many 10 times or more. All this huge energy transfer at every well, at every time it is hydraulically fractured!
Recently, there were some small quakes 3.4 magnitudes, near Irving Texas, not so far from DFW airport. There was concern for the runways and infra-structure.
Arlington TX Barnett Shale Blogger 