Aug
30
A Natural Gas Boom Sparks an Oil Boom
August 30, 2010 | 5 Comments
The horizontal drilling and fracturing techniques that press’s favorite devil Halliburton pioneered to trigger the natural gas boom are the same technologies spurring a Canadian and U.S. oil drilling boom. The impact of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing are migrating around the world, stabilizing and lowering not only North American gas prices but also international [...]
Aug
11
Farming Natural Gas
August 11, 2010 | 1 Comment
Luca Technologies harnesses natural processes to sustainably produce natural gas. The Golden, Colo. based company has developed a process to generate and then extract more natural gas from depleted coalbed methane wells by injecting water, microbes, and nutrients into the coal seams. The company is now pursuing permitting in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin to expand [...]
Jul
15
Getting to All That Shale Oil
July 15, 2010 | 1 Comment
Chinese researchers have identified a catalyst called NiMoW, for the hydrotreating of the refined diesel distillate fraction from the Fushun shale oil deposit. Shale oil has high levels of nitrogen, sulfur, and unsaturated hydrocarbons, limiting its potential use to supplant or replace crude oil. Coming up with economical cleaning systems would get shale oil more [...]
Jun
30
Change Crude Oil to Natural Gas in the Oil Field
June 30, 2010 | 6 Comments
Dr. Steve Larter holds the University of Calgary’s Canada Research Chair in Petroleum Geology and has more than 30 years’ research experience in petroleum geology and geochemistry in both academia and industry. Dr. Larter was named as one of the Top 10 Geologists in the U.K.in 2003, and has received numerous awards for his scientific [...]
Jun
7
Fracturing the Bakken Triples Oil Reserves
June 7, 2010 | 3 Comments
With the BP gulf floor oil leak making the news – all bad even if they get it stopped, some good news is worthwhile. Especially when the Obama tribe has frozen the major U.S. controlled North American resources of oil development for political appeasement to ‘do something.” Meanwhile the Bakken formation in the north of [...]
Apr
26
Don’t Mess With Texas Oil & Gas
April 26, 2010 | 7 Comments
The past week saw a flurry of reports and commentary about the Texas petroleum formation called Eagle Ford. Eagle Ford is a huge new oil and gas discovery, well, maybe not ‘new’ as much as economically profitable with the technology of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. With no particular surprise the technology has migrated from [...]
Feb
8
Methane Is the Future
February 8, 2010 | 3 Comments
Its as safe a declaration as can be made, methane, the main part of natural gas is a major future fuel. Case Item No. 1: In the U.S. alone, the combination of horizontal drilling and reservoir fracturing services becoming more affordable has moved up the U.S. reserve by 35% in existing fields of 2007 to [...]
Jan
18
A No Fear Oil and Gas Well Fracturing Method
January 18, 2010 | 1 Comment
Darrell Kosakewich was investigating new ways to settle the tailings ponds created by oilsands mining operations. As he was investigating it occurred to him that discharging an electrically charged emulsion would settle out and release the entrained water and oil. Then the first time he froze a coal sample and it shattered into a piece, [...]
