If there's one theme that's repeated itself over and over during The Oil Biz Week here at the Antisocial Network, it's the general public's complete disconnection from reality on the topic of petroleum reservoirs. Once again, we repeat: oil is not found in pockets, puddles, ponds, pools, rivers, lakes or layers. No, it's found in pore spaces between grains of a reservoir rock – spaces much smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. But Sam Jones over at InfoBarrel.com "knows" otherwise, as he informed us in "Fracking Allows Business Gas Suppliers to Drive Prices Down."¹ Here's what Sam said about gas reservoirs..."Traditional extraction methods relied on drilling in to [sic] pockets of natural gas that had already been released from the surrounding rock. This gas would be brought to the surface and contained, ready for processing and distribution to customers. When using these traditional methods, companies would often be faced with natural gas supplies that were too shallow to produce commercially viable amounts of gas because most of the natural gas was still trapped in the surrounding rock."Oops, he said the pocket word -- apparently giant open spaces filled with natural gas that obtained its get out of jail free card and left the "surrounding rock." Dumbass. And what's this utter bullshit about having natural gas supplies that are "too shallow to produce"? WTF, Sam? We also like his conflation of fracking and horizontal drilling: |
"...early fracking techniques were limited to releasing gas from sandstone and limestone via vertical wells. The gas trapped in extensive shale deposits could not be commercially harvested using this method. In the 1990s, improved fracking techniques were developed that allowed horizontal wells to be drilled into the shale deposits."
Wait a minute, Mr. Jones! You thought that drilling a horizontal well wasn't possible until fracking techniques "improved"? Dumbass: horizontal drilling is simply a version of directional drilling, which has been possible for fifty-plus years, although the process has become more effective and economical in the past twenty years.
Sam later repeats yet another popular junk science claim:
"By breaking down shale underground, fracking can contribute to minor earthquakes, according to the U.S. Geological Survey."
 
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Ummm, no: the U. S. Geological Survey doesn't say that. The USGS instead says, "While hydraulic fracturing works by making thousands of extremely small 'microearthquakes,' they are, with just a few exceptions, too small to be felt; none have been large enough to cause structural damage." That's not to mention that only someone with zero understanding of the Earth's structure would think that earthquakes are caused by "breaking down shale underground." |
A dumbass: a Dumbass of the Day, in fact!
¹ Infobarrel has deleted all its user-generated content and now claims to be a "green" website. Unfortunately, this particular piece of tripe was never archived at archive.org, so it's lots forever. No big deal...
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