Enervest Doing Liquid Butane Frac In The OIl Window

But Walker said EnerVest's biggest bet and most potential is finding oil in the gas-producing Utica Shale, which is in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and West Virginia. Walker is banking on using natural gas liquids, not water, in the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to draw out the oil.

"We still have a little over 800,000 net acres in what’s turning out to be a very big play," Walker said. "Everybody’s kind of written off the oil window in the Utica, but we think it’s just being completed the wrong way. It’s an extremely dry shale. It’s less than 5 percent water saturation. We spudded a well about three weeks ago, and we’re going to do a liquid butane frac. So we’re not going to introduce any water into the formation, which we think is creating a permeability barrier when you introduce water into it.

"It will be first liquid butane frac in that area — and maybe in the United States," Walker said. "If that works, it could open up a very big area. It’d be akin to the oil window of the Eagle Ford. So it’s probably our most upside and the thing that I do my daily prayers over. But I’ll have to caution that every time we really need something to … happen, I don’t think in my life it’s ever happened (laughs).

http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/blog/drilling-down/2014/10/enerv...

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by MJ on October 10, 2014 at 7:12am
Maybe this will open up the northern Utica one day. Thanks for the post TM.
Permalink Reply by Joseph-Ohio on October 10, 2014 at 8:04am

Good luck to EV.

Good luck to we in the north.

Wondering why not use Nitrogen (being inert one would think it would be safer off-hand) ?

Does it have to be a liquid ?

Why not gaseous and use compressors instead of pumps ?

Would separating the oil from the nitrogen be difficult or cause problems ?

Just wondering out loud here.

Maybe it has something to do with there being so much liquid butane about that it's easier to to obtain / available ?

Gee whiz regular old air is like 80% nitrogen - plenty of that around. Why not use ultra compressed air ?

Just wondering (and guessing) out loud again. There are many, many things I don't know. Maybe it's impossible to use high pressure gaseous nitrogen / air in this application. Don't know.

Tend to think tho / however, that if they could they already would have - but still don't know for sure.

Someone (one of my mentors) once advised me that the only dumb question is the one that's un-asked.

Anybody else out there know ?

Permalink Reply by Craig Stull on October 10, 2014 at 8:37am

Joe , Wondering what Mr. Snort thinks about the butane frac ?

Permalink Reply by Joseph-Ohio on October 10, 2014 at 11:10am

Why don't you ask him ?

Permalink Reply by Kangoo on October 10, 2014 at 10:47am

Nitrogen is not really usable in deep shale reservoirs for various reasons.....

Liquid Nitrogen costs a lot (injecting air with oxygen into hydrocarbons is not a good idea, except some very very rare heavy oil applications where people intentionally intend to create a fire as part of the oil recovery process: 'fire flood').

Nitrogen has very little hydrostatic pressure, so the surface pressures to fracture any rock in a deep shale reservoir would be much higher (there have been nitrogen fracs in very shallow reservoirs that are something like 1000 ft below surface).

Nitrogen is very compressible, requiring lots of energy and pump power (much less energy gets lost when a nearly incompressible fluid like water.

However the biggest reason is that Nitrogen cannot carry any sand to prop the fractures open (that's why gel is used in conventional water fluids to increase the carrying capacity).

Propane/Butane fracs overcome this problem by adding chemicals that dramatically increase the viscosity of the propane/butane and therefore allow to add sand to the fluid.

 

Permalink Reply by Joseph-Ohio on October 10, 2014 at 11:19am

So, based on what you've written, I guess regular old compressed air (being about 80% nitrogen) is not inert as it relates to pressurizing / fracturing an oil / natural gas well with; but, rather, can be hazardous to the point of assisting combustion; and pure nitrogen is too expensive (as well as not suitable to transport the sand proppant with) ?

So that puts it all back to propane / butane.

Thanks for the insight Kangoo.

Permalink Reply by MJ on October 10, 2014 at 8:36am
Joe, Here is an old but interesting clip on the subject:
http://www.midwestenergynews.com/2012/05/15/waterless-fracking-tech...
Permalink Reply by James Vanderink on October 10, 2014 at 9:04am
Comment#3 from the article-
As far as I know Devon Energy never used propane Frac in Ohio.
Permalink Reply by Bob Rock on October 10, 2014 at 10:48am
I got the pressure figured out. Just hand me 20 million dollars and I'll give the answer.
Permalink Reply by Cy Hawkins on October 10, 2014 at 12:26pm
My Lord.... If someone drills a well in Illinois you all will be all over it thinking there in a chance for the northern Utica. Get over it! I'm in western Coshocton and have a Utica strat well drilled a mile south and still skeptical. It's geology! The rock sucks up there period!
Permalink Reply by Joseph-Ohio on October 10, 2014 at 12:48pm

Says you and a couple others.

But that's all you say.

Seems to me the further east you move in OH the better the rock gets.

Permalink Reply by Cy Hawkins on October 10, 2014 at 1:16pm
Yep, you all got it figured out in Ashtabula. I like the chances of Ashtabula next to mine here. Not good. We got a bunch of Indians and a washed up president of Bass Energy permitting a Strat well in the middle of some serious terrain on a meager plan/budget. Do I think there's a chance in hell..... no. BTW Joseph Ohio, I love your spunk, but damn.....

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