2. Presentation Flow
• Prototype Small Footprint Drilling Rig
• NOx Air Emissions Studies
• Development of Ultra-deep Drilling Simulator (prototype)
EFD’s • Innovative Water Management Technology to Reduce Environmental Impacts of Produced Water
• Features
Eco-Centre Waste
Management
Facility
• Pursuing Efficiencies in well drilling and completion
• Pursuing Efficiencies in Production Operations
Efficiencies of
• Pursuing Efficiencies in Water Treatment and Disposal CONCLUSIONS
Traditional Wells • Pursuing Efficiencies in finding and Development Costs
3. Environment Friendly Drillings (EFD’s)
• Prototype Small Footprint Drilling Rig
• NOx Air Emissions Studies
• Development of Ultra-deep Drilling Simulator (prototype)
• Innovative Water Management Technology to Reduce
Environmental Impacts of Produced Water
4. Prototype Rigs
Green
Completion
Multi well
Pad Drilling
Small Better & Coiled Tubing
Low Impact
Rigs Prototype Innovative
Drilling
Drilling
Drilling Rig
Centralized
Fracturing
Micro hole
VSP Imaging
5. Multi well Pad Drilling
Multiwell pad drilling minimizes the
environmental footprint of drilling
operations while improving
efficiency, enabling simultaneous drilling
and completion operations and reducing the
number of well sites, vehicle traffic and land
surface disturbances.
Trinidad Drilling has 29 rigs operating in
the Haynesville Shale, drilling as many as
eight horizontal wells from a single pad.
6. Features:
• Ground level assembly without crane.
• Raise the mast and drill floor in one single shot.
• Raising system is built in to the substructure.
• Integrated mast sections and drill floor with drilling equipment.
• Mast stem sections are compact in size.
• Traveling block will be strung up to the crown block during rig move.
• Mast will include built-in guide rail.
• B.O.P. Handler & Transporter will keep the B.O.P. assembled during rig move.
Source: Veristic Manufacturing
7. Positives Constraints
drives efficiency gains Is not efficient for shallow depth drilling
drilling, fracturing
Requires monitoring at each stage
and producing all at the same time
reduces land disturbances for access roads, vehicle traffic and
trenching for gathering lines and production infrastructure.
Opportunity
1. Constraints can be blown up by
combining various techniques.
8. • One may think that this method has become a bit obsolete with the development of
techniques like Coiled Tube Drilling.
• With countries like India almost finished with shale gas policy formulations, these
techniques must be given importance.
9. Central Fracturing
Williams Production RMT Company is
using centralized pads to hydraulically
fracture multiple tight gas sands wells
on 10-acre spacing from a single central
pad location in the Piceance Basin in
Colorado. Working on as many as 22
wells simultaneously, the company has
fractured as many as 140 wells from a
centralized location, some as far as
three miles away.
10. Positives Constraints
Gets the gas to market quicker Proper pipeline infrastructure required
reduces surface disturbance by using existing
pads for frac equipment
supports reusing produced Opportunity
water to pump hydraulic fracturing treatments 1. Proper choice of technique on the
basis of ecosystem.
For a single pad, it reduces water truck trips by at
least 30%
12. Positives Constraints
Limited Availability of “fit for purpose”
Faster Mobilization and demobilization
Units
Faster Trip times Maintaining DOT weight Restrictions
while sustaining mobilization benefits
Limited number of BHA’s Capable of
Smaller Footprint
two phase drilling
Continuous circulation during Tripping
Opportunity:
Less site preparation and Remediation 1. Increased BHA availability
2. BHA cost reduction
3. Additional “fit for purpose” CTD
equipments.
13. Micro Hole VSP Imaging
• The opportunity microhole drilling offers for these deep unconventional-reservoir
development projects lie in its potential for improved target imaging via low-cost
seismic monitoring holes by use of new technologies and methodologies applied to
vertical seismic profiling (VSP)
• Given better imaging of reservoir “sweet spots,” the industry will not have to drill
conventional vertical holes from many closely spaced drilling locations to minimize
exploration risk.
Micro hole Imaging
• Relatively high geologic risk Much lower engineering development risk
• It should be used to shrink the smallest conventional hole size of 8.75 in. diameter
to at least 3.5 in.
14.
15. LOW IMPACT RIGS
• These rigs adapt to the environment with minimal disturbance.
• They are smaller, making them easier to move
• They can be more green on combination with pad drilling, they must have skid
packages, which minimize surface disturbance and reduce overall well costs.
• They have rounded bottom tanks, having side valves that vacuum trucks can access
to suck the fluid out more efficiently, reducing chances of spill.
• The round design also makes the cleaning process much easier and minimizes the
fluid haul off. -Source: Pioneers 60 Series Rigs
Limitation:
These rigs are smaller but are still capable of drilling to a total
depth of 13,000 feet.
16. GREEN COMPLETIONS
• “Green” Completions can be dubbed as capturing methane during drilling
completion and production (mostly in the flow back stream following hydraulic
fracturing).
• For this company must employ its midstream assets to lay a pipeline and flow wells
back through a separator, thus removing the sand and water and capturing the
remaining gas in a pipeline, rather than venting or flaring the gas.
• Recently, Devon has been able to quantify a reduction of 13 billion cubic feet of
emissions in the Barnett Shale area of North Texas by using green completions.
17. NOx Air Emissions Studies
From well drilling; to fracking; to gas extraction, processing, and transmission, sources of air
pollution emissions exist at every step in the process of converting unconventional gas into a
marketable product.
Air pollution sources from natural gas operations include:
• vehicle emissions from construction equipment and diesel trucks hauling workers, drilling
equipment, frack water, and waste water; Solved by Central Fracturing, Pad Drilling
• diesel engines used to power drilling rigs and fracking pumps; Using Alternative Sources
• large natural gas-fired stationary engines used to compress natural gas
for pipeline transport;
• emissions of raw natural gas to the atmosphere during well completion and from leaking pipes,
valves, storage tanks, and processing equipment; Solved by CTD to some extent
• volatilization from open wastewater pits. Solved by water management techniques
18. Development of Ultra-deep Drilling
Simulator
Ultra Deep Drilling Simulator
Laboratories Modeling
Rock Fluid Rock Mechanics Drilling fluids
20. Innovative Water Management
Techniques
Objectives under this techniques:
• Evaluation of promising commercially-available technologies for water reuse;
• Development of novel coatings to improve performance and cost of ultra
filtration, nano filtration and reverse osmosis treatment technologies in the
demineralization of flow back waters;
• Development of electro dialysis reversal for low-cost produced water and flow back
water demineralization; and
• Identification and evaluation of alternate sources of water that may be useful as
replacements for groundwater or surface waters that serve as community water
supplies.
21. • Oil shale produced waters are typically derived from retorting, mine drainage, and
leachate from spent oil shale because of the methods used for extracting
hydrocarbons from shale.
• Waters generated from oil shale can contain many of the same constituents of
concern (e.g. metals, arsenic, selenium, organics, and chlorides) present in other
produced waters.
• Simple treatment options include: ion exchange, reverse osmosis, electro dialysis
reversal, mechanical evaporation. Limitation: High Cost
Cost could be retrieved from
improved efficiencies
22. Solution: Constructed Wetland
Systems
Must include centralized facilities (pipe or haul to the location and treat) or
decentralized facilities designed for a single well or for a few nearby wells.
Even portable or “package” constructed wetland treatment systems can be designed
to be pulled to a site by truck and capable of immediately treating water after set up.
These “ready-to-go” systems could be very useful during fracture stimulation or
high initial water production from unconventional gas wells.
24. • The components of a cell (hydrosoil, vegetation, and hydroperiod, in effect the
residence time) are selected to produce conditions that promote specific
biogeochemical treatment processes.
• Hydrosoil (planting medium) contains sand, clay, and organic matter with
proportions dependent upon desired conditions.
• Examples of vegetation include Schoenoplectus californicus or bulrush when
reducing conditions are needed and Typha latifolia (cattail) to promote oxidizing
conditions. Hydroperiod is managed initially for rapid plant growth and then to
sustain treatment performance.
• The length of wetland cells in typical full-scale constructed wetlands ranges from a
few m to over 100 m.
25. Impact of Constructed Wetlands
• Reduces Environmental Risks
• have the potential to be used for a variety of purposes, such as irrigation, livestock
watering, cooling-tower water, municipal water use, domestic use, discharge to
receiving aquatic systems for other use downstream, and support of critical aquatic
life and wildlife.
• This can allow continued operation of existing wells in mature fields with high
water cuts and also lead to increased drilling and production, increasing the
contribution of domestic energy resources to our national energy supply.
27. Combination of all aspects of EFD’s-
EFD Scorecard
• A scorecard must be developed to measure the tradeoffs associated with
implementing low impact drilling technology in environmentally sensitive areas.
• The scorecard must assess drilling operations and technologies with respect to
air, site, water, waste management, biodiversity and societal issues.
• The scorecard must address issues like
1. getting materials to and from the rig site (site access)
2. reducing the rig site area
3. using alternative drilling rig power management systems
4. adopting waste management at the rig site.
28. Participants in development of
Scorecard
Academia Environmental Industry Government
Organizations
Sample EFD Scorecard
29. Eco-Centre Waste Management
Facility
• This waste processing center provides an unparalleled level of environmental
compliance from the rig to final disposal which includes remote monitoring
capabilities, allowing companies online access to track their waste streams and
ensure environmental reporting compliance.
• The 30,000-square-foot Eco-Centre facility can process in excess of 30,000
tonnes (33,000 tons) of drill cuttings and 14,000 cubic meters (3.7 million gallons)
of liquid waste, or slops, annually.
• The facility segregates each company’s drill cuttings, creating a transparent and
fully auditable trail.
• This facility provides E&P companies 24/7 visibility of their waste streams
throughout the process.
30. • Eco-Centre facility aims to recycle and reuse the generated waste streams to reduce
the overall carbon footprint of the facility and the operators it serves.
• The “cleaned” solid materials are used in place of quarried aggregates to cap local
landfill sites.
• The recovered oil is reused to fuel the processing mill at the Eco-Centre while
recovered water is used to cool and rehydrate the recovered solids.
• To minimize use of local water resources, rainwater is captured and used for a
variety of purposes, including fire suppression.
31. Efficiencies of Traditional Wells
Stages of Efficiencies Pursuing
for an E&P firm Efficiencies in
Pursuing finding and
Efficiencies in Development
Water Costs
Treatment and
Pursuing
Disposal
Efficiencies in
Production
Operations As these stages are
cumulated we get
Pursuing more benefits
Efficiencies in
well drilling
and
completion
32. • Efficiencies in drilling can be improved by using the techniques discussed in
EFD’s.
Companies are now contracting for “fit for purpose” rigs and equipments to
reduce drilling days.
• Formation of Cross functional teams to maximize the production from wells
operating in the basin. By investing $15 million in installing new pumping units
and compressors, changing tubing sizes and performing well work over, production
from these unconventional wells can be increased by 20%.
Source: William Cos.
34. • Efficiencies in Water Treatment and Disposal can be increased using Electro
dialysis to separate desalted water from concentrated saline solution other than
reverse osmosis, etc.
Recently it
has been
have shown
that CBM
produced
water could
be treated
for $0.15/bbl
35. • Efforts to reduce F&D costs must be initiated.
• Also focus must be put on reducing drilling, simulation costs along with increased
well recoveries.
• This will help in increasing efficiencies in finding and Development Costs.
36. CONCLUSIONS
• In this presentation, we tried to follow a balanced strategy which addresses
almost all issues that appeared significant to us.
• The techniques suggested can be combined together depending on
geographical location and economies of various rigs.
• Basically, we have prioritized increase in efficiency of each operation
keeping in mind the environmental implication.
37. REFERENCES
• Article: “Advances in Unconventional gas”
• Baker Hughes Waste Management Technique
• Paper: Economics of Unconventional Gas
• E&P Focus News (Winter 2009)
