More Details on Super fracking

New Energy and Fuel – “super fracking” as its becoming named is based on three basic improvements.

This is a follow up from this article

1. Schlumberger’s “HIWAY” idea is an innovation in the material forced into the rock. (The linked page has a good animation to explain the process in detail.)

Schlumberger’s Flow-Channel Fracturing Illustrated

2. The second idea called “RapidFrac” comes from Halliburton with a set of highly developed specialized pipe fittings that go into a newly drill hole. (This page also has a high quality animated video, though quite a large file.) Much like valves, these sections of the pipe when activated open passages to the rock.

Halliburtons RapidFrac System Illustrated. The explanation is part of the jpg, click the image to see the largest view.

Halliburton’s new technology also has a second benefit, the accurate and limited groups require about half the water and much less time. Where time is money this level of conservation and efficiency really adds up

3. Baker Hughes has developed disintegrating frack balls (No company info yet.). This solves the need to have a drilling rig return to the well, and spend several days drilling and fishing out the perhaps a many as 20 or even 30 balls dropped in to do the frack in stages.

4. Baker Hughes is developing and testing “super cracks,” a method of blasting deeper into dense rock to create wider channels in order to funnel more oil and gas. The aim for the technology, branded “DirectConnect,”(pdf file link) is to concentrate fracking power to target oil or gas buried deeper in the formation.

Perhaps the best news is the new technologies are reducing costs in a big way. Investor stock trackers have noticed and estimates like the one from JPMorgan Chase projects drops from $2.5 million per well down to an astonishing $750,000 – a drop of 70% – money that will get reinvested in more drilling and production.

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