By Justin Mikulka, Desmog
On February 15, 2018, a fracked natural gas well owned by ExxonMobil’s XTO Energy and located in southeast Ohio experienced a well blowout, causing it to gush the potent greenhouse gas methane for nearly three weeks. The obscure accident ultimately resulted in one of the biggest methane leaks in U.S. history. The New York Times reported in December that new satellite data revealed that this single gas well leaked more methane in 20 days than an entire year’s worth of methane released by the oil and gas industries in countries like Norway and France.
The cause of this massive leak was a failure of the gas well’s casing, or internal lining. Well casing failures represent yet another significant but not widely discussed technical problem for an unprofitable fracking industry.
Fracking and When Well Linings Fail
Casing failures occur when the steel or cement that’s lining an oil or gas well breaks or cracks, which means the well can’t maintain pressure anymore and creates a pathway for anything inside the well — such as fracking fluids — to leak into the surrounding environment. They can take place, as in the example of Exxon’s gas well in Ohio, at sites where hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is happening.
The results of these failures can be catastrophic, as a 2017 paper published by the Society of Petroleum Engineers spells out: “Outcomes from casing failures include blowouts, pollution, injuries/fatalities, and loss of the well with associated costs.”
Wells used to produce oil and gas via fracking are different from what are known as “conventional,” or traditionally drilled, oil wells. While a fracked well is initially drilled vertically like a conventional well, at a certain point, the well bore turns and drills horizontally for distances up to 20,000 feet (that’s nearly four miles). The well’s vertical portion is made up of several layers of steel pipe casing and cement that are designed to protect nearby groundwater from the oil, gas, and fracking fluids that pass through the well.
The process of hydraulic fracturing is what releases the oil and gas from the shale. This is accomplished by pumping a mixture of water, chemicals, and sand under such high pressure that it breaks apart the rock, creating fractures that allow trapped oil and gas to flow up the well to the surface.
Representation of a horizontally drilled and hydraulically fractured natural gas well, with the cycle of water involved. Credit: Environmental Protection Agency, public domain
According to the Society of Petroleum Engineers paper, produced by petroleum engineer Neal Adams and others, casing failures have been linked to the stresses and high pressures required to complete the fracking process and the industry is grappling with this costly and hazardous problem. This paper identified the problem in depth and used strong language (for engineers), noting, “Incidents of casing failures occurring during fracture stimulation operations are increasing at an alarming rate.”
For an industry laser-focused on cutting costs, the risk of losing an entire fracking well gets its attention.
The Society of Petroleum Engineers itself will be discussing this issue at its February 6 meeting in Texas during a three-hour panel called ”Casing Deformation in Unconventionals: Case Histories, Root-Causes, Managing and Mitigating.” This is not some fringe issue for independent operators. The panel tackling this issue is made up of representatives from the major industry players, including Shell, BP, and XTO, the subsidiary of ExxonMobil that operated the blown well in Ohio.
This growing problem for the fracking industry can be traced to the same issues that have caused past failures: cutting corners on costs because shale companies have been losing money and are pushing the limits of technology to try to finally turn a profit and pay back their sizable debts […]
Via https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/01/23/oil-gas-well-casing-failure-fracking-xto-ohio-blowout
The Most Revolutionary Act 
Reblogged this on Rangitikei Environmental Health Watch.
LikeLike
Deep Water Horizon oil spill: Halliburton officials knew weeks before the fatal explosion of the BP well in the Gulf of Mexico that the cement mixture they planned to use to seal the bottom of the well was unstable but still went ahead with the job. That’s what they do but Hayward had to get
back to England to watch his boat compete. They’ll do what ever it takes to get their Benjamins,
even kill and destroy the planet as demonstrated numerous times. We owe it all to them.
LikeLike
Indeed, Willpower. You make some excellent points.
LikeLike
This also makes me wonder what chemicals are being mixed with the water (pure water?) to be sent underground. The water may be more valuable than the petrochemicals, if you’re a “consumer.” Are the oil companies also poisoning the groundwater? Most likely, they are, even if the casings hold.
LikeLike
The chemicals used for fracking are a secret; they do not have to disclose this information
because they are that bad and the chemicals are contaminating the soil and water with
the pounding process used to inject them.
LikeLike
All I can tell you, Katherine, is what we know about fracking here in Taranaki. For the most part the oil and gas companies refuse to reveal what chemicals they use – they claim it’s “proprietary” information. In South Taranaki, there are still some sites that discharge wastes into the drinking water – resulting in a nice little cancer cluster (they’ve been fracking in Taranaki more than 30 years). In North Taranaki, they spread the wastes on pasture, plant grass on it and let dairy cows eat it (and then sell their milk to China). We’ve done everything possible to get this practice banned. When China got wise to this a few years ago, they forced our main dairy cooperative to agree not to accept milk from pasture treated with fracking waste.
LikeLike
http://reservoirengineers.mystrikingly.com/blog/how-do-reservoir-simulators-help-in-the-prediction-of-oil-and-gas-reservoirs
LikeLike