In the above article, methane that would normally be cascading out of landfills is being captured, condensed, and sold to "large fleet operators" such as Hertz and SuperShuttle. Rather than having this harmful gas fill up our atmosphere and speed up the rate of climate change, it is being harnessed as an energy source. The fuel that is made out of this methane burns cleaner than fossil fuels, is domestically produced, and is far less expansive than any other fuel source on the market.
Using methane for these large fleet operators makes a lot of sense because they require mass amounts of fuel. By using the cheaper methane product, these companies can save a lot of money. They also are able to cut down on their carbon emissions, a government mandated regulation that was been evolving over the past few decades. I think using methane for large fleets like this is a really good idea because they use the most amount of fossil fuels and it is easier for these fleets to plan around being near the methane pumps than it is for regular citizens who's location depends on their job rather than fuel availability.
One thing that the article didn't talk about is the infrastructural change this could potentially create. I wonder if the fuel is able to be directly used in the already existing engines or if something within the vehicles needs to be changed. Also, do gas stations have to be retrofitted to hold and pump methane gas or can they already accommodate the new fuel source?
In all, I am happy to see this sort of progress being made. With an increase in these types of methane projects comes an opportunity for the growth of alternative energy markets to start to be able to compete in the energy sector of our economy. While I do not believe that getting our energy from methane is the answer to all of our problems, I do like to see action being carried out on potential solutions. If our system were to completely switch to methane, we would run into a similar problem with depletion as we have with fossil fuels. It isn't the most sustainable, however it is helping to get the most value out of our resource usage. There will not be one technology that is going to save our planet, but I do believe many smaller, domestic products will help to cut down on the amount of actual energy we need to use and the impact we have on the planet. Why should we be using millions of barrels of oil a day to transport our energy across the world when instead we could just plug in to our trashcans for a much cheaper, and greener way of getting to the store.
Interview with Peter Troester
The person I chose to interview for
my independent study was my brother Peter, a technical professional engineer in
the hydraulic fracturing business. For privacy reasons he did not want me to
say the name the company he works for, but what they do is get contracted out
by big oil companies, such as Exon and BP, to perform the act of hydraulic
fracturing on drill sites, specifically in his case for wells in Wyoming and
North Dakota. His job is to be in the field monitoring job quality. He makes
sure that the customer is getting what they ordered in regards to pumping rates
and fluid recipes. I went into the interview wanting to ask him a number of
questions regarding the potential to capture the natural gas that gets flared
off during the process of hydrofracking and compressing it to be used as an
energy source. As a natural resources major, I thought it would be very
valuable to have this conversation seeing as not everybody has this kind of in
with someone in the business. To begin I would like to explain my understanding
of why chemicals are used in the first place and to go over the fracturing
process.
When Pete shows up to a well, an
oil company has already dug the whole. Sometimes his company gets contracted
out to do the cementing around the pipe of the dug out well, but never do they
actually dig the hole or insert the pipe into the ground themselves. In the
event that they have been hired to cement the well, the process involves
pumping wet cement through the pipe, which travels down to the bottom and back
up the sides of the hole, filling in the foot long gap between the ground and
the pipe. Different cement slurry mixtures can be used in this filling process.
When Peter’s company gets contracted out to do the cementing, the customer will
sometimes request a certain slurry to be used.
The cementing process has the
potential to cause an environmental catastrophe. If the pipe gets bent during
the process of shoving it down the well, the gas and frac fluid that is pumped
through the piping can leak out, and if the cement does not fill properly,
those contaminants can flow into the ground. Unfortunately, it is very
difficult to solve this issue because they cannot see what is happening that
far underground and cannot check whether the cement has any gaps in it or if
the pipe is bent. He explained to me that different cement slurry’s could
withstand more chemicals and retain a tighter seal than others. In the case of
the BP oil spill down in the Gulf, the wrong slurry was used, even though they
were advised against it, because it was cheaper, and the largest oil spill in
US history resulted because of it.
Pete
suggested several solutions for this problem. First off, there should exist
more regulation on the type of slurry that can be used in the cementing process.
This way companies will not be able to cheap out and lower the quality of the
well, putting at risk the environment surrounding the drill sites. Secondly,
because of the fact that you cannot monitor the integrity of the cement and
piping that far into the ground, some wells extend a far down as two miles,
drilling locations should be chosen more carefully so as to avoid the contact
the drilling fluids will have with the environment if a leak were to occur. Water
tables only exist until a certain depth, which Peter claims to be far less
underground than the wells in Wyoming and North Dakota. Additionally, the
fractures his company makes in the rock only extend out a few hundred feet. By
creating rules stating how far away from and below a well needs to be from a
water table, the risk of contaminating ground water could be eliminated. He
also mentioned that wells that have already been plugged from the past are
being reopened and fraced, some of which are not deep enough to avoid the risk
of contaminating groundwater, which more regulation could fix as well.
After the
piping is in the place, the fracture can be made. Over 95% of the mixture that
is pumped into the ground is water, the other couple of percent is mostly
guar-gel, a seed based component found in toothpaste, shampoo, gum and many
other common products. Other small percentages of chemicals are used, however
he did not disclose to me which ones. While it may seem like these are low
percentages, the quantity of these chemicals is actually quite large due to the
massive scale of drilling. These chemicals are necessary because water is not
viscous enough to fracture the rock, even at the high-pressure levels used, and
they create a wider path for the oil to flow. The fluid is pumped down the pipe
at a very fast rate, breaking the rock and creating larger cavities for oil to
be accessed through. These cavities are then pumped with sand at increasing
levels, starting at about one pound of sand for every gallon of fluid, ending
with four pounds of sand for every gallon of fluid. Sand takes the place of
piping in the fractures. Oil is able to travel through the sand because it is
more permeable than the rock. A breaker fluid is then pumped through the well
to break down the frac fluid to make it easier to extract. The frac fluid is
then both pumped and carried out of the well through natural pressure by the
customer.
Natural
pressure is very high in these wells because they are so far underground. At
the beginning of the pumping process, the natural pressure forces the oil out
through the sand veins and up the piping. Eventually though, oil has to be
pumped out of the ground like a traditional well.
Many
natural gases are released out of the pipe due to the pressure. One of these
gases is methane, the most harmful of greenhouse gases. Industry regulations
require oil companies to burn off these gases rather than allow them to escape
and pollute the atmosphere. The flaring of escaping natural gas from a large
chimney is one of the most prominent visuals on any frac job site. Even the
burning of these natural gases can be harmful because of the scale at which it
is done. To combat this many states have adopted a flaring limit per job site.
Pete has been on several jobs that have had to shut down and cap the well
because too much gas was being released and they were exceeding the flaring
limit.
It is this escaped gas that I feel
is going to waste, and so I asked Peter about the potential to capture the gas
for energy. The reason oil companies are not doing it currently is that it is
not economical. It would cost more money for them to capture and transport the
natural gas than what they could get back from selling it. Markets just do not
exist for natural gas and prices for it are very low and not competitive.
Even though his company would not
be capturing the gas themselves, they are still interested in the topic.
Currently, his companies production enhancement department is looking into
running their trucks and equipment on natural gas. They spend thousands of
dollars a year on diesel to run their machinery and it is very wasteful.
Running their trucks on natural gas would be cheaper for his company since the
price is much lower and would be far less harmful to the environment since natural
gas burns much cleaner than diesel and that gas is just being wasted anyway.
At the end of the drilling, the
sand is just left in the ground. There is no way of pumping out sand, so it
stays in the cavities created by the fracturing. This can be harmful to the
ecosystems because it is not the natural sand that occurs in that area. The
well is then plugged with cement and abandoned.
Another area of possible pollution
from fracing is in surface spills. Large trucks are used to mix the frac fluid
and it is transferred from machine to machine frequently, causing a potential
for spills. Peter has seen many surface spills, leaching the frac fluid into
the ground. To prevent this, some of his customers put down large tarps over
the entire job site to contain any sort of spills. This is another avoidable
issue if there were more regulation mandating the use of tarps.
After talking with my brother, the
two of us came to the same conclusion: we do not support hydraulic fracturing
simply because we believe that we should not be creating more infrastructure
for unsustainable fuel sources. Ground water contamination, surface
contamination, and air pollution can all be prevented in the industry with
stronger regulation, something the average American does not necessarily know.
Most people write off fracing because of those issues but they are preventable.
It is even possible to cut down on the wastefulness by capturing the natural
gas like I talked about. I just believe that we should be focusing our time and
energy on sustainable sources of energy. Capturing the natural gas at least is
an improvement from the current systems we already have.
The Global Methane Initiative is an example of how the government is trying to support these technologies, professionally laid out on this website. Click the link to read more about it.
The Global Methane Initiative is an example of how the government is trying to support these technologies, professionally laid out on this website. Click the link to read more about it.
