Articles Posted in OIl and Gas News

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Beginning in 2013, the town of Azle, in the heart of the Barnett Shale, experienced a “swarm” of earthquakes. Its citizens complained to the Texas Railroad Commission, blaming injection wells for the quakes. When the RRC held a meeting in Azle, refusing to link the quakes to the injection wells, the citizens decided to protest in Austin. They bussed themselves to a RRC open meeting, where they serenaded the commissioners with a song from Elvis, “All Shook Up.”

Southern Methodist University scientists have now published a paper concluding that the Azle quakes were “most likely” caused by the injection wells, together with withdrawals of produced water by the seventy-plus producing wells in the area. SMU installed monitors around Azle after the quakes began,and identified a fault running through the area. The scientists developed a model showing that the changes in pressure caused by the withdrawals on one side of the fault and the injections on the other were the likely cause of the quakes. Heather DeShon, one of the SMU researchers, said that “What we refer to as induced seismicity – earthquakes caused by something other than strictly natural forces – is often associated with subsurface pressure changes. We can rule out stress changes induced by local water table changes. While some uncertainties remain, it is unlikely that natural increases to tectonic stresses led to these events.”

SMU quake study picture
The Texas Railroad Commission website stills says that  “Texas has a long history of safe injection, and staff has not identified a significant correlation between faulting and injection practices.” After Azle’s visit to the RRC, it hired its own seismologist, David Pearson. In response to the SMU report,  Pearson said that “We will not be suspending activity at the two wells, especially given the fact that we have not seen any continuation of large-scale earthquakes in the Azle area that would give us any cause for alarm. The swarm has died out and has been quiet for some time.” Milton Rister, the Railroad Commission’s executive director, wrote a letter requesting a meeting with the SMU researchers.

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Last month I wrote about the Texas legislature’s efforts to limit cities’ authority to regulate drilling within their jurisdictions, after the City of Denton passed a ban on hydraulic fracturing. The bill that has emerged is House Bill 40, sponsored by Drew Darby, chairman of the House Energy Resources Committee. It passed out of committee, but yesterday was returned to committee on a technicality. A companion bill in the Senate, Senate Bill 1165, has also passed out of its Natural Resources committee.

The bill would greatly limit cities’ ability to regulate drilling. It provides that cities may only regulate “aboveground activity related to an oil and gas operation that occurs at or above the surface of the ground, including a regulation governing fire and emergency response, traffic, lights, or noise, or imposing notice or reasonable setback requirements.” Any ordinance must be “commercially reasonable,” defined as “a condition that would allow a reasonably prudent operator to produce, process and transport oil and gas, as determined based on the objective standard of a reasonably prudent operator and not on an individualized assessment of an actual operator’s capacity to act.”

The bill leaves may questions unanswered. For example, Fort Worth has an ordinance that regulates saltwater pipelines.  Are pipelines an “aboveground activity” that cities can regulate?

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A recent “swarm” of small quakes in Irving has caused a stir and ignited a series of articles about the relation between oil and gas activity and seismic events. The quakes in Irving were strong enough to knock some books off of shelves.

After residents of the town of Azle experienced a series of quakes in 2013, residents protested in Austin before the Texas Railroad Commission, and as a result the RRC hired its own seismologist to study the problem. Most scientists have linked quakes in Texas and Oklahoma to injection of large volumes of produced water. Recently one study in Ohio linked quakes there to recent fracking of wells in the area.

Most if not all of the actual studies of recent quake activity are being done by Southern Methodist University. It has studied the quakes around Azle, and a report of its study is expected soon. After the quakes in Irving, SMU is installing seismic monitors in that area.

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Ever heard of the Groningen gas field? Neither had I, until I read a recent article in the New York Times. It is in the Netherlands, and was discovered in 1959. 

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The field is operated by a joint venture of Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil. Today, the field produces about one-third of all natural gas produced in the European Union.  It produces more gas each year than Russia recently committed to sell to China, and contributes some $16.4 billion a year to the Netherlands’ national government. According to Wikipedia, as of 2009 the field had produced 39.3 trillion cubic feet, 60% of total reserves, and production is expected to last for another 50 years. It is listed as the ninth largest gas field in the world, based on estimated recoverable reserves. For comparison, the EIA estimates total U.S. proved shale gas reserves at about 129 tcf.  Some gas field.

The NYT article reports that earthquakes linked to the depletion of the field have recently been increasing in number and intensity, and the Dutch government has required the operator to reduce production by 20% to see if that will quell the tremors. That will put more pressure on the EU to find alternate gas supplies.

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The Ohio Department of Natural Resources has imposed rules on exploration companies requiring seismic monitoring around new well sites near fault lines and quake epicenters in the Utica Shale.  According to the Columbus Dispatch, the rules require monitors at new drill sites located within 3 miles of known fault lines or areas that have experienced an earthquake greater than magnitude 2.0. Monitors cost about $20,000 each, and as many as five are needed at each well. “ODNR officials said if monitors at drilling sites detect even a magnitude 1.0 quake, fracking will immediately stop and an investigation will start. If fracking is blamed, a moratorium would be instituted 3 miles around the epicenter,” according to the article. Earlier earthquake activity near Youngstown, Ohio was attributed to an injection well, which was shut down by Ohio DNR.

Earthquakes in Oklahoma and North Texas in the Barnett Shale, and more recently in the Eagle Ford in South Texas, have been linked to injection wells, but not to hydraulic fracturing. The Texas Railroad Commission has hired a seismologist to study the matter but has not imposed any new regulations on injection wells.

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As drilling activity in the onshore US continues to grow, more and more attention is being paid to the environmental effects of exploration and production.  Media stories abound about groundwater contamination, the demand for fresh water from hydraulic fracturing, increased air emissions from exploration and production, controversy over pipeline condemnation and construction, earthquakes linked to wastewater injection, increased traffic and accidents, and effects on endangered species. Recent examples:

Air Emissions

This week The Center for Public Integrity, InsideClimate News and The Weather Channel released a report, Big Oil, Bad Air, on the effects of drilling in the Eagle Ford Shale on air quality in South Texas.  The report is highly critical of the lack of regulation by the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality (TCEQ) of emissions from oil and gas exploration and production operations in that region. Criticism of the report has already hit the media. Here is an industry response to the report from Energy in Depth, a website sponsored by industry. The TCEQ says it plans to conduct video surveillance of air quality over the region this summer

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Recent news relating to oil and gas exploration and development in Texas:

Dune Sagebrush LizardGood article on efforts of industry and State regulators to avoid problems raised by possible listing of the Dune Sagebrush Lizard under the Endangered Species Act. Here is a map of the lizard’s habitat – right in the middle of the Permian Basin.

Earthquakes in the Oil Patch — Earthquakes in and around Azle, in the Barnett Shale, have caused quite a stir.  Here’s a good article from the San Antonio News. Everyone seems to agree that the quakes are caused by injection wells, except the Texas Railroad Commission, which until recently called the connection “hypothetical”. After one of the Commissioners, David Porter, faced angry homeowners at a town hall meeting in Azle, he called for the RRC to hire its own seismologist. Azle residents are planning a bus trip to Austin to attend the next RRC conference in protest.

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StateImpact Texas has published a series of good articles about the growing evidence that the huge quantities of wastewater being injected in the Barnett Shale field are causing earthquakes — some of sufficient intensity to cause significant damages. Lawsuits have been filed in Johnson County to recover for the damage.  StateImpact’s most recent article can be found here. Links to all of StateImpact’s articles on earthquakes caused by oil and gas activity are here.

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WoodMackenzie has recently come out with its 2013 ranking of the world’s twenty largest oil companies, and their change in production over the last ten years:

Twenty Biggest Oil Companies3.JPG

(BOE is barrels of oil equivalent.)  As you can see, most are state-owned companies. Russia re-acquired its privately-owned companies. Saudi Arabia has increased its production 28% in the last 10 years.  Iran, despite the embargo, has increased its production by 24%, in part because of increased export of natural gas. Venezuela’s production has suffered from politicization of its national oil company. Shell’s efforts to increase production by acquiring a position in U.S. shale plays has not been successful. BP has sold off a substantial part of its production. China has invested big-time to fuel its economy. And the world economy has managed to survive $100 oil.  For comparison, the total world production in 2010 was about 137 BOE/day. These top twenty companies together produced about 60% of that total.

For a good article on these numbers, see Forbes’ article, The World’s Biggest Oil Companies – 2013, here.

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