Editorial comment

Vol. 232 No.7

I’ve covered technology advances in the oil and gas industry for more than 35 years. As such, I never thought I would write a column on this topic, if I couldn’t vouch for the source—my own sister.

Here’s the story and why I’m sticking to it. My sister and her late husband first acquired 20 acres of farmland far west of Houston about 10 years ago. My brother-in-law had earned a PhD in soil chemistry, and farming was his first love. My sister graduated with a fine arts degree and, subsequently, became a master tree technician. The couple used the farmland to grow Indian herbs and also built a green house, a fruit orchard and a beehive. They even raised a few head of cattle. Subsequently, they acquired two additional nearby pieces of farmland of about 15–20 acres each.

In 2003, as the price of oil started climbing, a small, independent oilman from Midland approached my brother-in-law and asked if he could drill for oil and gas on their first property. As my brother-in-law later recounted to me, the oilman had looked into well logs for the area and, even though a major wireline service company had surmised that there were no commercial quantities of oil and gas to be found, the oilman wanted to drill anyway. The first well discovered oil and gas at about 5,000 ft. The oilman built production gathering facilities and started pumping both oil and gas.

A few years later, when the oilman was discussing a drill site on one of the properties with my sister and brother-in-law, my sister piped up. “Why don’t you drill over there? You might find something.” The oilman ignored my sister’s advice and drilled a dry hole at the site of his choice. For the next try, he decided to drill at the site my sister had suggested and discovered substantial quantities of oil and gas. My sister’s hunches proved right on the money two more times. I asked her recently what was the thought process that helped her achieve a 100% exploration success ratio. “Just a feeling,” she said.

My sister is a private person and has no interest in commercializing her “talent.” In fact, she might throw a copy of this magazine at me for publicizing this story. I can’t imagine her setting off to the Permian basin with exploration geologists in tow or subjecting herself to any kind of scientific research.

There have been stories recently about birds using a sixth sense to feel electromagnetic sensations in order to migrate to a specific site thousands of miles away. Princeton biologist Martin Wikelski and two of his colleagues in Illinois and Germany have found that birds rely on a built-in magnetic compass, which they recalibrate each evening based on the direction of the setting sun. The scientists have published their findings in the April 16 issue of Science magazine. A different kind of sixth sense might be at work here.

Another reference to a sixth sense comes from Isabel Allende’s book Ines of My Soul, a historical novel, which chronicles the adventures of Spanish conquistadores who came South America looking for gold and conquests in the new world. The leading character in the novel is Ines Suarez, who is the 16th-century consort of Pedro de Valdivia, the conqueror of Chile. Apparently Ines had a talent for dowsing and was able to find water beneath the desert when the expedition was about to die of thirst.

Instinct often compensated for lack of technology during the infancy of the oil and gas industry. Even today, with all exploration data being equal, instinct may be the best way to go in discovering the next oil and gas bonanza.
Have you experienced similar incidents of exploration using a sixth sense? We’d love to receive your stories. But please be reasonable. I don’t want my next column to be about the latest technology developments in divining rods.

IN THIS ISSUE

Propane-based fracing.  The use of water for fracing has become a major challenge. High volumes are required, and the frac water must be either recycled or disposed of in an environmentally acceptable manner. Gasfrac Energy Services suggests a novel approach using gelled propane for fracing, as the company has demonstrated in Canada’s McCully tight gas field.

Rising technology for risers. As E&P operations extend to deeper waters, the weight of the steel catenary risers becomes a limiting factor. Offshore Editor Justin Smith discusses several technologies designed to address the weight issue—hybrid risers that transfer the load from the production vessel to separate buoys, the use of buoyancy modules to reduce the weight of riser strings while drilling, and even low-weight aluminum designs. In a related column, Contributing Editor Jim Redden provides an update on dual-gradient drilling, which reduces the hydrostatic weight on the wellhead by filling the riser with lower-density fluid.

Permian boom. It doesn’t require a sixth sense to realize that if the oil prices go up and new technologies come into play, there will be boom times in the Permian basin. Operators, big and small, are applying horizontal drilling and multistage fracturing techniques to extract oil and NGLs from both shale and sandstone formations. There is apprehension about how oil and gas operations will be affected by efforts to place the sand dune lizard on the federal endangered species list. However, Bill Pike’s exclusive conversation with one of the lizards suggests that the critters have more to fear from cattle ranchers clearing the shinnery oak forest that forms their habitat.