Indirectly Becoming An Oil And Gas Investor Brookshire Salt Dome

By Jerri Perry


There are ways of becoming an oil and gas investor Brookshire Salt Dome apart from directly investing. The country is enjoying a massive oil boom thanks to oil and gas deposits trapped deep inside small-grained shale rock deposits that like beneath Oklahoma, Texas and much of New England. These rich reserves have already propelled the United States into the top position of oil producers in the world.

This new approach to oil and gas exploration and production has necessitated the development of new technologies, specifically high volume water management. Hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling are required to access these reserves. The process involves the high pressure injection of a mixture of chemicals, sand and water to create fractures in the Earth's crust deep beneath the surface to make these stores accessible.

Mixed in with huge volumes of water are a large amount of sand, used to prop the fractures open so that the oil and gas that lies within can flow outwards to the surface. A single shale formation can take anywhere from a few million gallons to tens of millions of gallons of water to extract the resources buried deep within the rock. Multiply that by the 37,000 active sites, and that is an almost incalculable amount of water.

Simply managing the high volumes of frac water from the source to the drill site, through processing tanks and into the rock, and handling back flow and produced water has meant that new technologies have been forced to evolve rapidly. Produced water is that which is originally in the rock formation before any frac water has been injected. It comes up with the frac backflow when the fracturing phase of the job is complete.

Produced water can amount to as much as eight times the volume of water that is injected into the rock to induce fracturing. Some of this used water is placed into specially constructed rapid evaporation tanks to minimize the volume that has to be piped or trucked from the site to its final destination to be recycled or disposed of. Some of it is treated and recycled to be reused again in another fracking project.

What cannot be disposed of in one of these means is injected into disposal wells. It is this "produced" water injected into the disposal wells, and not the fracturing process, that has people understandably concerned about the generation of earthquakes. Scientists at the US Geological Survey in Pasadena have been studying what are colloquially known as "frackquakes" in Oklahoma.

Scientists with the USGS have established that there is definitely a link between injecting water into disposal wells and associated seismic activity. Another problem with frac water management is the prospect of contaminating public water supplies. There have been reports of people igniting fires under their taps.

Indirectly becoming an oil and gas investor Brookshire Salt Dome involves investing in major new technologies for high volume frac water management. Hydraulic fracturing has opened up vast resources that will keep this country energized well into the 22nd century. In order to fully utilize these resources, new technologies in waste water management and recycling are vital to its success.




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