Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Oilfield Fuel Tank Polishing In The Shale Oil And Gas Industry

By Iva Cannon


All over the world, there are millions of tanks in industries like oil and gas exploration and production. They have numerous uses, including storage, processing, transportation, and others. Each and every one of these tanks needs to be cleaned every once in a while. Mostly, they are located in outdoor oilfields, with no access to oilfield fuel tank polishing equipment such as a pump. Some companies have devised ingenious devices, including pumps that run on diesel, to solve this problem. Horizontal drilling is growing, and so will the demand for tank-cleaning protocols.

New technologies in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have opened up the possibility of exploiting vast reserves of oil and gas trapped inside densely-packed, sedimentary shale rock deposits deep within the Earth's crust. Without this resource, the country faced a complete fuel drought in the next decade.

After only a few years of shale exploration, not only does America have access to fuel for the remainder of this century, it is now the top oil producer in the world, having surpassed Russia. This success has come at a price. There are concerns that hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking, " contaminates drinking water and causes earthquakes.

In the process of fracking, a well is first drilled deep into the Earth's crust above shale rock formations where oil and/or gas have been determined to reside. A combination of water and chemicals are then forced down the drilled well at high pressures, forcing cracks in the underlying rock and freeing the oil and gas to rise up to the surface via the induced cracks and the drilled well. Seven major shale oil plays have been identified and exploited in the United States. These are Niobrara, Bakken, Granite Wash, Permian, Andarko-Woodford, Marcellus and Eagle Ford.

Slightly more than half of the investment in these seven fields is going into two major plays: Eagle Ford and Bakken. Wells of the Bakken shale play, located in Western North Dakota and Eastern Montana, are approximately 10,000 feet deep. The brittle and easily-harvested shale formations of Eagle Ford in Southern Texas produce at depths between 4,000 feet and 14,000 feet.

One-fourth of the total money invested in shale oil drilling is split between the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and the Permian Basin in west Texas and New Mexico. The Permian is named for the geologic period from which the shale deposits are derived. Marcellus Shale is one of the shallowest deposits, drilled to a depth of 6,300 feet.

Of the three remaining shale plays, Granite Wash reserves lying beneath Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle are the deepest at 15,000 feet. The last two deposits are located in Oklahoma (Andarko-Woodford) and Nebraska (Niobrara).

Road traffic deaths have dramatically increased in both the Eagle Ford Shale and Permian Basin. In 2014, a total of 696 drivers were killed and there were 8,600 serious accidents in which occupants were either killed or seriously injured. More serious accidents occur in the hour around 5 a. M. Than any other time of day. This is largely attributable to collisions between ordinary vehicles and 18-wheelers.




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