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Show THE ZEPHYRSEPTEMBER 1991 PAGE 18 An Oil Field Primer -- the layman's guide to horizontal drilling- by Ken Davey The oil boom continues in southeast Utah. Pressure is building on the Bureau of Land Management to begin preparations for an environmental assessment of full scale oil field development in the region. The state land board is pushing to get oil leases ready for school trust lands near Dead Horse Point State Park. And the oil companies are maneuvering to be part of the play, to get current leases Into production and new leases secured. Oil and petroleum products, despite pleas from conservation groups, consultants, committees and panels, are becoming more important to our everyday lives. The stuff drive Broncos and tastefully undersized under the ground not only fuels our big it for Is source also the power virtually the entire transportation system In the Accords, United States, delivering raw materials and commodities from mines and farms to mills and assembly plants, then on to retail markets. Petroleum is the basis of literally thousands of products, Including plastics, medicines, cosmetics, building supplies, clothing. And after briefly flirting with alternative fuel research during the 1970s, the direction of national energy policy under the Reagan and Bush administrations has not been to look for other energy sources, or even a serious look at national conservation, but instead has centered on gaining more and more access to oil, from offshore drilling, to exploitation of the arctic area, to a political outlook designed to bring about or strengthen U.S. hegemony In the Arsb East. But oil companies testing capable of DNA Identification from microscopic sections of tissue. still find their product the old fashioned way-th- ey guess. And that's why oil companies have not pushed widescale exploration and production In the area before, because the odds of them drilling directly into one of the fractures was so unlikely, it was not worth the drilling expense, despite the heavy financial rewards when they hit. years back, oil companies began fooling around with other drilling methods. One was diagonal drilling, or digging your hole at an angle. That increases your chances of hitting a fracture, because you cover more horizontal area within the geologic layer. That was the basic idea behind the proposed Coors Energy well near Little Canyon. They were drilling a direct horizontal well, but because at that point the Paradox fold dropped down at an angle, they were hoping to Increase the likelihood of hitting a fracture. But even with But a few this advantage, it was still considered a longshot by oil experts. And for most of the fold, the layer is relatively flat, and relatively thin, at points Just hundreds of feet In depth. Since the formation is well over a mile underground, diagonal drilling would mean thousands of feet of extra drilling, and still would only expose a small horizontal section of the fold. From the gas lines and oil company superprofits during the Gerald Ford years to the oil spills befouling mile after mile of shoreline, the image of the petroleum industry has fallen on bad times during that same period, to the point that oil companies are held in the same regard as used car dealers, lawyers, and television evangalists, and just slightly ahead of politicians and journalists. But while some msy rail against the oil cartels, we grow more dependent upon them, and by increasing demand for their product, prod them on to stick straws in the ground and suck up as much decayed organic material as they can, as fast as they can. The problem is, after a century of sucking, it is more difficult to find the oil, and when It is found, It Is in more distant, remote locations. Thats where Moab comes In. Even at the turn of the 20th Century, oil was known to be beneath the ground here. But it was difficult to find, and more difficult to pump. And while there has been sporadic pumping operations over the decades, it was easier and more profitable to leave this region alone and go elsewhere. Now, the attention is focused here. The paradox fold, running along the Colorado River, running north from near Arches National Park and south to near Canyonlands, is now in play. And it took new technology to make that happen. has always been known to be beneath us, the difficulties of production were always enough to keep cautious companies out of the region, and usually enough to drive less cautious companies to bankruptcy. Beneath the ground, about 7,000 feet down, the paradox fold, a geologic layer, Is awash In the black stuff. But the oil doesn't sit in vast and easy to find pools, but instead Is held within the rock itself. And the rock lacks permeability, or in other words is not porous enough to allow the oil to flow easily through IL So sticking a well into the rock itself doesn't get you anything. But the rocks are cracked, or fractured. If you stand on the aide of a canyon and look across, you don't see a smooth sea of sandstone, but instead a number of usually vertical cracks, or fractures, extending from the bottom of the canyon to the top. The same occurs deep underground, in the oil laden rock. And, 7,000 feet down, the pressure is tremendous, the weight of the land on top crushing down on the formation. That pressure literally squeezes the oil out of the rock Itself, despite the low permeability, and the oil flows into those fractures. If an oil company can drill a well Into a fracture, that pressure will pump the oil out of the well, and a release to the surface creates a sort of petroleum spring, for as the oil is removed, the pressure forces more oil Into the fracture. The trick, therefore, is to get your well Into the fracture. And that would be easy if they ran horizontally, then any hole punched in the ground was likely to hit a fracture. But since they run vertically, the same direction the well is being drilled, then you have to start right on top of a fracture, or you pass by it While oil Oil hunting technology has grown more and more sophisticated over the recent years. But an oil well, at the bottom, is about 8 inches wide, and determining exactly what is underground a mile or two down is still nowhere near precise enough to allow for such a small margin of error. Scientific and technical advancement has been incredible in recent years, with spy satellites able to read license plates while orbiting the earth and forensic companies figured, what If we could go down, say 7,000 feet, then turn left or right? What if we could get down to the level of the formation, then go horizontally? That would mean a much greater chance, even a likelihood, that eventually wo will hit a fracture. layer, one well Along with that, since the horizontal well runs parallel to the can hit a fracture, then continue on to the next one and the next one, and eventually one well can pump from all of them at the same time. So one horizontal well can access the same But oil oil-beari- ng amount of oil as a dozen conventional wells. Company officials remain cautious. Because even though on paper, it's a sure thing, a drilling bit doesn't go through paper, it goes through rock and water and layers of the earth's surface that don't always cooperate with the wishes of the humans who own and operate the machinery. And In this area, the biggest hurdle to making the project work Is salt Between the surface rock and the paradox fold formation lies a vast belt of salt And that salt Is always moving, always swaying, more like a jello than rock. It Is relatively easy, compared to hard rock, to drill through, but relatively difficult to stabilize. So to drill through it, you must encase the well, a much more expensive proposition than just Jabbing a hole in the ground. And even with the casing, the shaking and quivering salt formation can, and has in the past, crushed wells. Yet BLM staff members remain somewhat skeptical. Oil the canyons edge is now showing nightly 8:15 PM $3 ADMISSION (children under 12 free) DISCOUNT RATES ARE AVAILABLE TO GROUPS ON REQUEST We have a new collection of CFI gift items books calendars Ts, mugs at the Stuntman Hall of Fame Hollywood Stuntmens Hall of Fame Inquire about other CFI programs 100 E. 100 N. CANYONLANDS FIELD INSTITUTE Post Office Box 68 Moab. Utah 84532 1320 so. highway 191 |