It's said that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. While that may be the case most years—and most definitely was the case this year, if one considers the weather in Houston alone—this particular March marked a few milestones for the oil and gas industry worth noting here.
One milestone marked a paradigm-shifting achievement in drilling technology, while the other, a hapless, tragic environmental failure.
Marking milestones is important in both cases since industry will never progress without improving its technology, and it will never improve its technology without learning just what will not work.
Fracing's birthday cards?
Mar. 17 marked the 65th anniversary of the first commercial use of hydraulic fracturing. The American Petroleum Industry celebrated the milestone with great fanfare using social media. The national trade association made available electronic "birthday" cards featuring a black-and-white photo of one of the world's first commercially fraced wells. These digital greetings connected readers to a blog (www.energytomorrow.org) with more information on the history and success of fracing.
In the blog post, API's Mark Green detailed the origins of the industry-changing technology. He wrote, "In a 2010 article for the Society of Petroleum Engineers' Journal of Petroleum Technology (JPT), NSI Technologies' Carl Montgomery and Michael Smith write that energy pioneers experimented with oil well 'shooting' that would 'rubblize' oil-bearing rock to increase flows. Various methodologies were used to fracture rock formations over the years until Stanolind Oil, a division of Standard Oil of Indiana, conducted the first experimental 'hydrafrac' in 1947 in Kansas. It involved pumping fluid-carrying 'propping agents' at high pressure into a well to create fractures that could be held open to free oil and natural gas in the rock."
Green continued, quoting JPT: "A patent was issued in 1949, with an exclusive license granted to the Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Co. (Howco) to pump the new Hydrafrac process. Howco performed the first two commercial fracturing treatments—one, costing $900, in Stephens County, Okla., and the other, costing $1,000, in Archer County, Tex.—on Mar. 17, 1949."
Green continued that when data for 2013 are completely compiled, the US Energy Information Administration expects the US to be the world leader in combined oil and natural gas production for the year, many thanks to fracing technology.
'The rare exception'
Twenty-five years ago on Mar. 24, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker, bound for Long Beach, Calif., from Valdez terminal, struck Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef offshore Alaska, spilling 260,000-750,000 bbl of crude oil over a series of days. At the time, the spill was history's largest in US waters. Sadly, this record was eclipsed only recently by the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
Much has been written about the Exxon Valdez spill since that fateful day. A week following the spill, OGJ's editorial page said the disaster left industry "with much to repair" (OGJ, Apr. 3, 1989, p. 17). It said, "The US has suffered its biggest oil spill. The industry seems confused and unprepared. And environmentalists are declaring, 'We told you so.'"
At that time, opponents of the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline System had warned that there would be a major spill of crude oil. And Exxon Valdez proved them right.
The editorial said, "The oil industry can function safely in the environment—most of the time. It's the rare exception that hurts."
The editorial ends with an eerie sense of foreboding: "Industry must have a contingency plan able to cope with any future disastrous spill. Then it must perform in a manner that stretches the odds that the plan ever will need to be used. It has a lot to lose if it fails, including the effectiveness of arguments based on technological achievement. That's the real environmental disaster that may be taking shape off Valdez."
Now, 25 years later, Prince William Sound has healed as much as it can after such a disaterous spill, much in the same way the gulf continues to heal in the aftermath of the Macondo well blowout.
Industry must now do nothing short of execute its advancing technologies as flawlessly as humanly possible, ever-cautious of—but well-prepared for—that rare exception.
