RE: Natural gas: The fracking fallacy

['Chris de Morsella' via Everything List]

 

 

From: everything-list@googlegroups.com 
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Clark

 

On Thu, Dec 25, 2014  'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List 
<everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

 

 > DO you even know what the term “tight oil” means technically?

 

Yes. Tight oil is just another name for shale oil, it's light oil in kerogen 
rich shale deposits that needs hydraulic fracking to be extracted economically. 
 There is a enormous amount of tight oil in the Earth but until just a few 
years ago it might as well have been on the moon for all the good it did us, 
but things change and sometimes very very rapidly. Technology marches on. 

 

> Kerogen IS NOT OIL!


But when heated to about 150 degrees centigrade in the absence of oxygen 
kerogen releases crude oil, and when heated to 200 degrees it releases natural 
gas. 

The process temperatures you quote are far lower than those I have seen in the 
studies I have looked at. In those reference studies they speak of the need to 
slow cook the kerogen at process temperatures of 350 degrees C cooking out most 
of the oil in about an hour.

But even – for the sake of discussion – accepting you low ball numbers -- pray 
tell me the energy requirements to heat the billions upon billions of metric 
tons of a kerogen bearing shale formation up to 150 degrees centigrade or 
whatever the actual (significantly higher) process temperature needs to be? 

>  Kerogen bearing shale is a very different kind of resource


Huh? Very different from what?

>From oil. You can make oil from coal – does that mean we start calling coal 
>oil? In the same manner Kerogen IS NOT oil. It needs to be cooked – as I 
>previously pointed out – in earlier posts on this thread (and you probably did 
>not read). Kerogen is a tar-like hydrocarbon (the remnants of ancient algae) 
>embedded in solid sedimentary shale rock. Kerogen is inside the rock itself, 
>it is not a liquid trapped in micro-pores. You can try to insist they are the 
>same as long as you want, and I will continue to call you on this false 
>assumption.

>  that has proven uneconomical 


>>And yet this "uneconomical" resource has caused the oil production of the USA 
>>to skyrocket. 

Again you are bullshitting John, by mixing apples and oranges. In fact, it is 
by drilling in the sweet spots in tight oil or gas bearing shale formations 
such as the Eagle Ford, the Bakken or the Marcellus that have produced the 
recent boom in production. 

This IS NOT kerogen bearing shale! 

Kerogen bearing shale is a very different resource that poses much greater 
energetic and technical challenges and has so far defeated all attempts to 
produce it (ECONOMICALLY)

And in July 2008, well before this "uneconomical" process was implemented, the 
worldwide price of West Texas Intermediate Crude oil was $147 a barrel, but 
today on December 25  2014  West Texas Intermediate crude oil is selling at $56 
a barrel. I don't think the word "uneconomical" means what you think it does.

I don’t think you know what you are talking about – because you keep lumping 
the kerogen bearing shale deposits in with the very much smaller tight oil 
bearing shale deposits and pretending that they are essentially the same thing 
WHEN THEY ARE NOT!

> Shell Oil has just recently abandoned its kerogen extraction attempts


For christ's sake, if you're wildcatting for conventional oil or shale oil 
you're always going to run into dry holes from time to time, it's part of the 
price of doing business. So back in 2013 Shell oil announced they were 
abandoning one minuscule 30 million (that's million with a m) dollar shale oil 
pilot project. Big deal. On the very same day they said there were going to 
build a HUGE 12.5 billion dollar plant (that's billion with a B) in Louisiana 
to turn natural gas into diesel and jet fuel 

 

A big so what to your transparent attempt at misdirection? What bearing does a 
natural gas conversion plant have on kerogen extraction? None John. It is an 
unrelated energy factoid you throw in to confuse the issue. There is no large 
scale attempt to extract oil from kerogen bearing shale deposits. Shell Oil 
just abandoned its experimental plant in western Colorado. 

Even though Shell Oil has been guarded about releasing its EROI figures for its 
kerogen extraction pilot plant, I am seeing figures around 2.5:1, which is 
another way of saying that Shell Oil – after years of tweaking its process and 
trying to maximize its efficiency – discovered they needed something in the 
order of two and a half times as much energy to cook the oil out of their pilot 
project kerogen bearing shale than they could recover from the extracted liquid.

You don’t like these facts John – they don’t support your cornucopean argument 
– so you ignore the actual project – that was shut down and that WAS ATTEMPTING 
to extract oil from kerogen by announcing an utterly unrelated energy 
investment made by the Shell Oil company.

 

> > And as I've said existing technology can only exploit about 25% of it, but 
> > that's more than enough to change the economy of the world.

 

> I bet you just pulled that 25% figure out of your ass John.


Then I guess I have a well educated ass because the Paris based IEA says there 
are 3.7 trillion barrels of shale oil in the USA but only 1 trillion can be 
economically recovered with existing technology. You do the arithmetic. 

 

And I already told you what I think of those IEA (and EIA) numbers. You go back 
to the same poison well and trot them out again. This entire thread actually 
began by my posting a study in Nature (a journal you profess to read) that was 
using actual granular scale data from producing fields to seriously question 
those very numbers you keep quoting over and over. The EIA and the IEA numbers 
are based on flawed assumptions, as the study I linked to attempts to show. 

Shale deposits are not homogenous masses that bear “tight oil” in equal 
proportions throughout the 3-dimensional matrix of their extent. This paper 
(and many other sources I have seen – including well by well statistics from 
the Bakken and the Eagle Ford that are compiled by researchers I am familiar 
with and correspond with) called that EIA and IEA assumption into question.

I am doing the arithmetic – I am looking for a data driven approach to 
estimating the actual recoverable reserves that is based on data from similar 
formations that have been produced. Principally I look at the Eagle Ford well 
head production data (these reports are available and produced on a weekly 
basis with a few months lag time). The Eagle Ford is the most mature tight oil 
shale deposit and has the most complete depletion curves.

It is by looking at actual well head data that a truer picture of actual 
reserves can be developed. 

I feel I must emphasize – given your poor grasp of the crucial difference 
between tight oil bearing shale deposits and kerogen bearing deposits – that 
the very much larger kerogen deposits remain outside our ability to extract in 
an economic manner.



> The very EIA (and IEA) numbers you keep siting are under attack 

 

They are under attack by you and by some environmentalists, but as I've said 
before most environmentalists are not serious people, they are very silly 
people. 

Did you ever even read the paper – in Nature a journal you claim to read – that 
I linked to. You are descending down to the level of playground name calling. A 
clear sign of the poverty of your argument.

To make any difference in your lifetime the numbers would have to be off by at 
least a order of magnitude, and the energy Department doesn't think they are, 
nor Paris based IEA, nor any reputable professional organization of geologists. 
 

The EIA just had to downgrade its Monterey shale deposit reserve estimates by a 
whopping 94% -- which is well over an order of magnitude.

> There is no informed consensus – outside of shale oil boosterism circles – 
> about the fact that by far most of these resources ARE NOT reserves. [...] 
> Just because the EIA and IEA (both captive organizations staffed by a 
> revolving door system with insider vested fossil and nuclear interests) say 
> something does not make it the word of God!

 

And it looks like even Wikipedia is part of this evil conspiracy of 
disinformation lies and mendacity because it says: "Global technically 
recoverable oil shale reserves have recently been estimated at about 2.8 to 3.3 
trillion barrels (450×109 to 520×109 m3) of shale oil, with the largest 
reserves in the United States, which is thought to have 1.5–2.6 trillion 
barrels (240×109–410×109 m3)" 

Bravo! I see you know how to use a search engine. These numbers are based on 
flawed assumptions and methodology, as the data driven approach, used by the 
study published in the journal Nature (you claim to read) is increasingly 
revealing. 


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shale_oil#Reserves_and_production

In that same article it says: "In March 2011, the United States Bureau of Land 
Management called into question proposals in the U.S. for commercial 
operations, stating that "There are no economically viable ways yet known to 
extract and process oil shale for commercial purposes"".  Also in March 2011 
there is a article in Forbes magazine about economist Nouriel Roubini who must 
have agreed with the United States Bureau of Land Management, and a lot of oil 
traders must have agreed with them too:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisbarth/2011/03/07/roubini-predicts-oil-will-hit-150-per-barrel-traders-betting-on-200/

The headline of the article is "Roubini Predicts Oil Will Hit $150 Per Barrel, 
Traders Betting On $200" .  Remember that was March 2011, yesterday December 25 
2014 oil was selling at $56 a barrel.

 

> So go ahead keep calling me a tree hugger if that makes you feel better 

 

OK.

 

> Nobody is disputing that the global spot price for oil has gone down;

 

And there must have been a reason for such a gargantuan economic event. OPEC 
did not increase production but the USA increased oil production enormously, do 
you think that maybe just maybe that had something to do with it? And how did 
the USA increase production, it can't be shale because you tell me the oil 
companies are abandoning it, and yet the USA somehow managed to dramatically 
increase production. What's the secret?  

 

The oil majors are abandoning their tight oil plays, after discovering that it 
is a low profit difficult sector. It is not called “tight” oil for no reason. 
The recent surge in US production of tight oil surprised many people (myself 
included); I did not expect it. I have been researching this for years now and 
have developed a deeper understanding of this sector and what is true and what 
is PR hype meant to suck in more capital. The independent drillers that have 
dominated this sector have managed to raise huge amounts of capital off of a 
wave of euphoria and perception that the boom will go on forever.

These independent drillers are good – they know their business – they know how 
to find oil. Where it is and where it IS NOT. These drillers have gone after 
the higher yield concentrations first – economics 101 – and these sweet spots 
are getting depleted very rapidly.

I am not disputing the boom in US tight oil production – I get the well head 
monthly reports from the Bakken and the Eagle Ford.

What I am disputing is the false assumption that the production rates of these 
sweet spots can be extrapolated and applied to the entire mass of the geologic 
formation in order to come up with the fantastically euphoric numbers the EIA 
and the IEA quote.

 

 

> you keep trumpeting it like it had some magical hidden meaning. 

 

It's not magical and it's not hidden but it sure as hell has meaning, it means 
that if shale oil were all smoke and mirrors as you insist it is then the price 
of the most important commodity in the world would not have dropped from $147 
to $56. Only something COLOSSAL could have caused a drop like that, if it was 
not "uneconomical" shale oil then what was it?   

 

I have stated my position that the kerogen bearing deposits are uneconomical 
and will remain so. The EROI is 1:2.5 – in order to get one unit of energy out 
you need to put 2.5 units of energy in.

By far most of the shale deposits of kerogen bearing deposits. You make the 
error of assuming that the process for extracting a useful energy product (e.g. 
oil) from this rock is similar to fracking a tight oil bearing shale deposit. 
It isn’t!

The tight oil that is recoverable is far less than the figures you believe in, 
and the easiest and most lucrative patches of this tight oil have already been 
drilled and are already being exploited. They are already depleting – those 
wells are producing at only a small fraction of what they produced during their 
first year (after fracking)

 

> What does the current sot price have to do with the size of the global 
> reserve figures

 

If the collective wisdom of millions of people, that is to say the market, 
thought that you were right and we were about to run out of shale oil then the 
price would go up. It hasn't. Could the market be wrong? Sure it's not 
infallible, in 2011 the market thought shale oil would never be economical; but 
even so I think the market is more likely to be correct than you are.

 

And 90% of the shale deposits are and will remain uneconomical. There is no way 
to extract energy from kerogen bearing rock – as long as the process requires 
that that rock be slowly cooked at a temperature of 350 degrees C (the 
processing temperature used)

 

> I recall many months back when you made a complete idiot of yourself on this 
> very list – trying to portray the global solar PV capacity numbers I had 
> quoted as being off by many orders of magnitude when in fact – as everyone 
> knows – you messed up your math.

 

Speaking of solar cells, the USA recently put a enormous tariff on Chinese 
solar cells because they said they were selling them too cheaply, which tells 
me what they really think about solar cells with crystal clarity, they think 
they're useless in meeting world energy demands; but it plays well with the 
masses, tree huggers love solar cells and they like tariffs too. But can you 
imagine the USA putting a tariff on something that's really useful, like oil 
from Saudi Arabia, because it's being sold too cheaply? I can't.  

I'm not naive enough to expect any of these facts to cause you to change your 
mind, you like solar cell so despite the facts you've convinced yourself they 
can solve our energy problems, and you don't like shale oil so despite the 
facts you've convinced yourself it can't. Well I like solar cells too and I'm 
perfectly willing to admit that they would be a better solution than shale oil 
IF THEY WORKED, but I am also aware that my personal preference does not change 
reality.

 

Yet you believe in the fairy tale that slowly cooking mountains of shale rock 
at a process temperature of 350 degrees C (which you claim is 150 degrees C) in 
order to extract the oil that was locked up in that rock is the solution to our 
energy problems. Shell Oil tried – at their experimental facility in Colorado; 
they threw in the towel.

And the recently abandoned Shell Oil attempt to extract oil from kerogen 
bearing shale comes after the $8 billion the US government threw at this 
problem during the seventies (it as a Carter Administration response to the 
OPEC oil embargo). The program was abandoned. Later in 1982 Exxon Mobile gave 
up after spending some $5 billion on its attempts to extract energy from 
Kerogen bearing shale. 

Huge amounts of money have been used in many attempts – going all the way back 
to 1915 (the first kerogen boom/bust cycle); it is not just the Shell Oil R&D 
effort that recently was shuttered. Everyone who has tried, including the 
US-DOE and Exxon/Mobile have thrown in the towel.

But you know better than these major oil companies (and the DOE) do… you must 
be so smart John…. So much smarter than those silly environmentalists you seem 
to need to disparage.

Smoking crack may make you feel better, but it is not good for the health of 
your intelligence.

-Chris

 

  John K Clark

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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