Canadian Company Fracking For Gas With Propane Gas

Transcript

INTRO: Hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale requires millions of gallons of water. A Canadian company has developed a technique that eliminates the need for all that water. But as The Allegheny Frontís Matt Richmond reports, itís a hard sell for the gas and oil industry.
STARK: ìWeíre at a wellpad in Susquehanna County, this is the Tetic pad.î
RICHMOND: Thatís Cabot Oil and Gas spokesman George Stark. Behind him, a drilling rig slowly digs down into the rock.
It will grind about 9000 feet down and then about 3500 feet horizontally.
During the vertical drilling, cement will be poured around the pipes ó This is to prevent the well from leaking.
STARK: ìCasing and cementing are by far the critical pieces to do up front to ensure that you are protecting the groundwater up front.
RICHMOND: The amount of water used in a hydraulically fractured well is staggering ó as much as 8 million gallons for a single well in the Marcellus Shale. The water that comes back out of the well poses other threats. Open storage ponds can leak and improperly treated wastewater can contaminate drinking water supplies.
Now, a Canadian company called GasFrac has begun fracturing wells without all that water. Itís using propane.
According to GasFrac spokesman Kyle Ward, using propane instead of water to fracture a well resolves many of the threats to groundwater. Millions of gallons of flowback water are eliminated. And Propane doesnít dissolve the salt or naturally occurring radioactive materials that are already in the rock.
Ward says only four ingredients besides propane are sent down the well and all of them are organic.
WARD: ìSo what weíre doing basically is once weíre done, thereís nothing in the hole except sand, I mean everything is gone.î
RICHMOND: The 100 to 150 thousand gallons of propane used to fracture the well comes back up with the natural gas and can be sold or reused
Last year, the company performed more than 500 waterless fractures, almost four times as many as in 2009.
Ward says the company fracked its first well just four years ago / and it takes time for companies to switch over to a new technology.
WARD: ìBut if they start seeing the production value and that they can actually make more money, then thatís when their ears perk up and thatís what weíre starting to see.î
RICHMOND: But the switch to propane is no sure bet. First of all, itís not clear how effective propane is. Thatís because companies already using it keep any increased production a secret for the competitive advantage.
Companies will move away from using water if propane is proven to be more profitable...
David Yoxtheimer is a hydrogeologist with Penn Stateís Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research. He says the cost of water usage and disposal - could propel the switch.
YOXTHEIMER: ìIt ranges from roughly five to ten percent of the cost of a well so that could be anywhere from 200,000 upwards of maybe even a million dollars in some cases for a bigger well.î
RICHMOND: Yoxtheimer says propane may be more useful in areas with whatís known as ëwet gas,í like in western Pennsylvania, where thereís already more propane in the reservoir. But water is better suited for deeper shales.
Thatís because it takes high pressure to fracture a well.
Derek Ellsworth, another researcher at Penn State, agrees. He compares opening a fracture to inflating a balloon, and using propane is like blowing up the balloon with air.
ELLSWORTH: ìAs you pump it into the balloon, certainly the balloon does get larger, but it doesnít get larger as quickly as if you were filling the balloon with water.î
RICHMOND: Ellsworth says propane might not be the best substitute for water. He says other gases, like nitrogen or CO2, would be cheaper and may work just as well. Nitrogen is basically air, not hard to find, and pumping CO2 pollution into the ground is better than releasing it into the atmosphere, says Ellsworth.
ìHaving large amounts of CO2 available that could be utilized in some way with large portions of it sequestered in these shale reservoirs by absorption has some attractiveness to it.î
Everybody agrees that more research on propane, or LPG, fracking is needed. Nadia Steinzor of the Oil and Gas Accountability Project says the risks of working with a highly explosive gas, at high pressure, should give everyone pause.
STEINZOR: ìEvery time thereís a new technology that could get more gas out of the ground and get it online, a lot of people get really excited but just because LPG is new and different and it doesnít use water, doesnít make it safe.î
RICHMOND: Gasfrac spokesman Kyle Ward says that since an explosion last year at a well in Canada, the company shut down operations and increased safety precautions. And they seem to have recovered. Theyíve expanded operations into Texas and fracked test wells recently in Ohioís Utica Shale. And in the end, it may be the companyís growth that may be the best way to gauge whether or not its technology works.
For the Allegheny Front, Iím Matt Richmond.