Oil & Gas Article – Klamath Oil & Gas LLC

Clinton doubles down against fracking, raising alarms from industry

admin — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 03:54:35 +0000

MAR 7, 2016 05:58:41 PM CSTARTICLE 1 OF 20

Clinton doubles down against fracking, raising alarms from industry

BY JENNIFER A. DLOUHY BLOOMBERG NEWS

Hillary Clinton’s promise during a debate Sunday to aggressively regulate fracking deepens the divide between Republican and Democratic presidential candidates on oil and gas development and signifies her continued shift to the left on environmental issues.

Her comments were perceived as a clear threat to pro-drilling interests and Republican politicians in Texas and other states that get major revenue from the energy industry.

The debate hits hard in North Texas, where local governments and property owners have reaped millions of dollars in royalties from the Barnett Shale fracking boom that is now in decline. The Barnett Shale is one of the nation’s largest natural gas fields and is considered the birthplace of modern fracking practices.

In the Democratic presidential debate in Flint, Mich., against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Clinton said she wouldn’t support fracking in states or local communities that don’t want it, if it causes pollution, or if the chemicals used aren’t disclosed.

“By the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place,” Clinton said.

The comments marked a shift for Clinton, who, like President Barack Obama, has generally supported fracking, while insisting that methane leaks must be plugged and steps taken to ensure the practice doesn’t contaminate water. She even highlighted natural gas in a campaign fact sheet last month as lowering energy costs, reducing air pollution and putting people to work.

But translating Clinton’s debate-stage profession into actual regulation clamping down on the technique would be difficult, if not impossible. There are limits to what a president — any president — can do to limit the hydraulic fracturing process now being used to free gas and oil from dense rock formations nationwide.

Although state and local governments regulate the practice — and some ban it altogether — the federal government doesn’t have much authority to directly regulate fracking on private lands. The biggest openings are through laws allowing the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate air and water pollution tied to fracking, said Kevin Book, an analyst with ClearView Energy Partners. “But these controls are both limited and litigable.”

Further, most U.S. oil and gas wells today are stimulated into production using hydraulic fracturing. Shut down fracking, and you shut down the oil and gas boom along with it, said Katie Brown, a spokesman for Energy In Depth, a research program funded by the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

Clinton has worked to burnish her environmental credentials on the campaign trail, pressed by activists who have embraced Sanders and his clean energy agenda.

Sanders also opposed

Unlike Clinton’s nuanced stance, Sanders’ response to the issue Sunday was direct: “No, I do not support fracking.”

Industry officials viewed Clinton’s fracking answer “as a political response to the guy standing to the left of her on the stage,” said Neal Kirby, a spokesman for the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

“She is continually being driven to the left by Sen. Sanders,” said Mike McKenna, a Virginia-based lobbyist and Republican strategist. Now, “she wants to kill the American energy boom, which is something not even the Obama crew could imagine.”

But Clinton’s comments are not enough for some deep-green environmentalists who want an all-out ban on fracking, not just regulation making it more difficult and more expensive.

“Clinton will continue to struggle to convince climate advocates that she is serious about addressing the crisis until she comes out for a full ban on fracking,” Yong Jung Cho, a campaign coordinator with the environmental activist group 350 Action said in a statement. “Clinton has moved from supporting fracking to insisting on regulations that would make it impossible to frack in most places. It’s high time to come out against it all together.”

Sanders has pushed for an end to all oil, gas and coal development on federal lands.

GOP supportive

By contrast, Republican presidential candidates have been uniformly supportive of domestic oil and gas development.

Donald Trump, the GOP front-runner, says his support of fracking can win votes in New York, where the activity is banned.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Trump’s chief rival and a long-time ally of the energy industry, has fought for years to lessen regulation on exploration, production and refining. Cruz has long denounced Democrats for trying to undermine the industry, which also is sounding off on Clinton’s remarks.

“Shutting down U.S. production would make the United States less competitive, more reliant on foreign sources of energy and disrupt the geopolitical advantages that hydraulic fracturing delivers to our allies abroad,” said Louis Finkel, executive vice president of the American Petroleum Institute, in an emailed statement.

“The false choice offered on the campaign trail is a political stunt by those who are spouting populist rhetoric for political points; they are not being honest with American voters.”

Staff writer John Gravois contributed to this report.

Midland and Delaware Basin – Article from Drilling Info

admin — Mon, 07 Mar 2016 17:22:50 +0000

Great Article from Drilling Infohttp://info.drillinginfo.com/midland-basin-vs-delaware-basin/

PART 1: EVOLUTION AND DEPOSITION

This will be the first of a three part series where Drilling Info author Leslie Sutton will discuss the Permian Basin as well as the similarities and differences in the Midland Basin and the Delaware Basin. This first discussion will cover the evolution and deposition while the following will cover stratigraphy, reservoir quality, and production of this basin.

The Greater Permian Basin (GPB) is one of the largest and most structurally complex regions in North America. This sedimentary basin is comprised of several sub-basins and platforms. It covers an area about 250 miles wide and 300 miles long in 52 counties in west Texas and southeast New Mexico. That’s more than 75,000 square miles! Though it contains one of the world’s thickest deposits of Permian aged rocks, it was actually named after the period of geologic time (Permian: 299 million to 251 million years ago) where the basin reached its maximum depth of 29,000 feet.

EVOLUTION

The evolution of the basin can be attributed to three distinct phases: (1) mass deposition (2) continental collision (3) basin filling. Before the Permian Basin was formed, this region was a broad marine area called the Tobosa Basin. During the Cambrian to Mississippian periods (541 to 323 million years ago), massive amounts of clastic sediments were deposited in this area causing it to form a depression. What we define as the basin today began forming in late Mississippian and early Pennsylvanian (323 to 299 million years ago) when the supercontinents Laurasia and Gondwana collided to form Pangea causing faulting and uplift. While the area was covered by a seaway (figure 1), episodes of faulting, uplift, and erosion (associated with the Marathon-Ouachita Orogeny) as well as different rates of subsidence caused structural deformations in the larger Tobosa Basin that divided it into sub-basins and platforms.

Figure 1: Paleographic time sequence, from youngest to oldest, of the evolution of the Greater Permian Basin, Source: DI 2.0 Paleo Layer

The final process that created the GPB was the filling of the sub-basins with sediments. The Midland Basin, Central Basin Platform, and the Delaware basin are the three main components of the GPB that we know today. Other sections of the GPB include: the Northwest Shelf, Marfa Bain, Ozona Arch, Hovey Channel, Val Verde Basin, and Eastern Shelf.

Figure 2: Structural differences between the Delaware Basin, Central Platform, and Midland Basin, source: Kelly et al. “Permian Basin – Easy to Oversimplify, Hard to Overlook”

DEPOSITION

The Midland and Delaware sub-basins share mutual characteristics such as age and lithology, but depths, nomenclature, and development vary throughout the GPB. The sub-basins rapidly subsided, while the platform remained at a higher elevation. This resulted in areas having very different water depths and depositional environments. The basins accumulated terrigenous clastics that are associated with deep water environments, whereas coarse grains associated with shallow reef environments were deposited along the platform. Differences in sedimentary depositions and tectonics initiated stratigraphic discontinuities between the two sub-basins.

THE MIDLAND BASIN

The eastern Midland Basin accumulated large amounts of clastic sediments from the Ouachita orogenic belt during the Pennsylvanian (323 to 299 million years ago). As these sediments were deposited, they formed a thick subaqueous deltaic system that consumed the basin from east to west. During the Permian period, the delta system was covered with floodplains and was nearly filled by the Middle Permian.

THE DELAWARE BASIN

The western area of the GPB, the Delaware Basin, was a structural and topographical low that provided an inlet for marine water during most of the Permian. Minor sedimentation was received from the low coastal plains that surrounded the basin. While the Midland Basin was almost full of sediment by the Middle Permian, the Delaware became host to reefs built by sponges, algae, and microbial organisms. These organisms, along with the deep water inputs supplied by the Hovey Channel (figure 3), promoted carbonate buildups that formed a higher elevation area which separated the shallow water and deep water deposits.

Figure 3: The Hovey Channel supplied the Delaware Basin with deep water sediment, while the Midland Basin was restricted by carbonate reefs of the Central Platform, source:http://www.vyey.com/assets/permian-basin

Depth also had an important impact on the way sediments were deposited in the basin. The Delaware Basin is approximately 2,000 feet deeper than the Midland Basin (figure 4), thus causing the sediments to experience nearly twice as much pressure during burial. This is a leading factor in the stratigraphic discontinuities between the two sub-basins.

Figure 4: Depth map of the Delaware Basin, Central Platform, and Midland Basin, source:http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/pdfz/documents/2012/10412fairhurst/ndx_fairhurst.pdf.html

STILL TO COME…

Hopefully you now have a better understand of how the Greater Permian Basin, as a whole, evolved into the structure that we know it to be today as well as the relationships between the Midland and Delaware sub-basins. I will next discuss the stratigraphic differences between the two sub-basins and will later discuss how this is all related to the hydrocarbon production of these two popular plays. Stay tuned…

February 24, 2015 by Leslie Sutton – http://info.drillinginfo.com/permian-basin-production/

YOUR TURN

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