Naturally Fractured Niobrara?

I normally won't post on stories outside North Dakota but since this involves many companies drilling for oil in North Dakota and a potential new formation in the area, I will link the article on Investipedia.com regarding the Niobrara.

Note that St Mary Land says that the formation is naturally fractured, and one of their Niobrara wells had good production even without fracturing. It sounds like the Niobrara horizontal wells will still be fractured. More to follow, I'm sure.

The most interesting thing about this article, however, relates to something the North Dakota governor said yesterday: that if the EPA is given the authority to regulate fracturing, it will shut down fracturing for two-to-three years while they put the regulations in place. Wouldn't that be interesting if oil companies could shift their attention to the Niobrara during this hiatus?  Of course, if the Niobrara is not productive in North Dakota, and if fracture stimulation is shut down for a few years, it will be devastating to the oil industry in North Dakota.

Is There Enough Water for All That Fracking?

There is not enough groundwater for the oil industry's fracking of horizontal wells in North Dakota, but there is more than enough water in Lake Sakakawea. [Update: see comment below.]

Each well requires about 4 million gallons of water for fracturing. With estimates of 1,800 new wells next year, that would require about 60 acre-feet of water.

A spokesman said that Lake Sakakawea flows at about 40,000 acre-feet daily. Sixty (6) acre-feet represents about three-tenths of one percent, according to the spokesman.

I could be wrong, but 60/40,000 = 0.0015 or 0.15% or less than two-tenths of one percent, but the point is taken.

The water necessary for fracking wells in North Dakota will not be a limiting factor.

UPDATES

July 24, 2010: A new water pipeline will alleviate ground water stress in Dunn County.

This Will Slow Things Down in the Bakken

North Dakota governor says that if Environmental Protection Agency is granted authority to regulate fracturing, he does not expect necessarily more stringent rules (don't bet on it) but that fracturing would come to a stop for two to three years while the regulations were put in place.

As the governor noted: that would put a lot of folks out of work. I'm beginning to think the current administration enjoys ten percent unemployment for some strange reason.

And that's why folks are not eager to invest in better housing in the Williston Basin.

(And, of course, with the price of oil in free fall, that won't help matters either. Maybe the boom is over.)

#1 in Caviar, Too?

It has to be a really slow day in the Bakken when I start reporting on the North Dakota caviar industry, but it's hard to resist when stories about North Dakota caviar showing up in Hollywood, Japan and Russia appear.

Whether or not North Dakota is #1 in caviar, the state is #1 in honey production.

North Dakota #1 in Future of Carbon Capture and Storage?

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has to do with sequestering (capturing) carbon dioxide (CO2) and storing it somewhere. According to Wikipedia (which is as good a source as anything else, I guess), there are four industrial-scale storage projects in operation worldwide:

• Sleipner, North Sea, Norway, StatoilHydro, oldest (started in 1996)
• Snøhvit, Barents Sea, Norway, Statoil, development plan in 2001
• Salah, Algeria, "will be"
• Weyburn-Midale CO2 Project, southeastern Saskatchewan, 2000, world's largest

The Weyburn oil reservoir was discovered in 1954, and the CCS project was started in 2000, and is now the world's largest CCS project. The CO2 for this project is captured at the Dakota Gasification Company plant in Beulah, North Dakota, which has produced methane from coal for more than 30 years. At Weyburn, the CO2 will be used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) with an injection rate of about 1.5 million tons per year. The first phase finished in 2004, and demonstrated that CO2 can be stored underground at the site safely and indefinitely. The second phase, expected to last until 2009, is investigating how the technology can be expanded on a larger scale.

The science behind the claim that man-made CO2 production is causing global warming has been debunked but that's another story for another time. But if you say anything long enough and loud enough, it eventually becomes the truth. Or at least it becomes the truth for those who subscribe to the New York Times newspaper.

For more on current thoughts of fracking and EOR, click here. 

I guess North Dakota can soon add CSS to its list of "number one's," along with durum wheat, ICBMs, long-range bombers, and honey production.