UK has US shale geologies, claims Ineos
21 Nov 2014
Parts of the UK have the similar geology to successful US shale gas plays such as the Barnett Shale, Ineos claimed yesterday.
The claim was made at the Royal Society of Chemistry as the company announced its plans to invest $1 billion (£640m) in UK shale gas development, focussed on areas of the North of England and Scotland’s Midland Valley.
Speaking at the event in London, Ineos Upstream consultant geologist Kent Bowker said he had looked at data previously examined by the British Geological Survey (BGS) and concluded there were many areas that showed potential to be similar in their characteristics to US shale plays.
“There is a similarity to Barnett and other shale plays, and I’m very optimistic that we will get commercial production from the UK,” said Bowker, who has been hired by Ineos following his work with pioneering US shale gas company Mitchell Energy.
“The geology seems to be there, although we won’t know until we start drilling.”
Bowker’s comments come in contrast to those made last month by BGS team leader for unconventional oil & gas Nick Riley, who said UK geology was far more complex than the US, with the largest shale gas reserves located in thick isolated pockets, rather than the continuous layer cake found in many US shale plays.
From the data I have seen there are some simple shale layers that remind me of successful shale layers in the US
Ineos Upstream’s Kent Bowker
However, Bowker said that while he acknowledged the greater complexity of geology in parts of the UK than in the US, there were still potential areas were shale gas could be easily extracted.
“The thing that I bring to this that may be different to other geologists in the UK that have looked at the data is experience of knowing which geologies have worked in the US,” he said.
“From the data I have seen there are some simple shale layers that remind me of successful shale layers in the US. I know that there are big thick piles of shale with lots of gas, but they not be the best place economically to get shale gas.”
Bowker, along with his former Mitchell Energy colleagues Dan Steward and Nick Steinsberger, has been working with Ineos Upstream since May to identify the best sites to bid for in the current licensing round.
The company has bid for exploration licenses in the north of England. If successful with all its applications then these and the two licenses in has already acquired in Scotland’s Midland Valley will require £640 million of exploration investment.
Speaking at the Royal Society of Chemistry yesterday, Ineos chairman Jim Ratcliffe said he expected the majority of exploratory drilling to take place in 2015 and 2016.
Looking further ahead to potential production, Steward confirmed that Ineos would carry out so-called “green completions” (see box below) on all of its projects.
“We didn’t vent methane at Mitchell Energy, theses guys (Ineos) don’t do it and I don’t believe your government would allow it,” said Steward.
Green Completions
After construction a well must be cleaned up before it is ready to produce oil or gas. Any fluids, sand, coal particles, or drill cuttings within the well bore must be removed.
The conventional method for carrying out this “completion” is to pump air down the well, which lifts the waste fluids and solids out.
The solid and liquid waste materials are then dumped into a pit or tank, and any gas that is removed is flared or vented to the atmosphere.
Well completions that involve hydraulic fracturing result in a higher rate of flowback than most conventional well completions, due to the large quantities of water and proppant (mainly sand) used in the fracking process.
This flowback is generally composed of a mixture of fracking fluids with reservoir gas and liquids.
Venting the gas means allowing methane emissions with a greenhouse gas effect 20 times greater than carbon dioxide to escape into the atmosphere.
Flaring can reduce these emissions by 95%, but the Environment Agency has applied a ban on flaring at shale sites except in the rarest of circumstances.
Given that both flaring and venting also waste vital gas resources, having an impact on a project’s profitability, alternatives methods of completion have been sought in the US shale industry.
Proving most popular are “Green Completions”, also known as Reduced Emission Completions, which like flaring reduce emissions by 95% but can also retain vital hydrocarbons for future sale.
In these completions the gas that comes to the surface is separated from fluids and solids using a temporary system comprising a set of piping connections and vessels that include a plug catcher, a sand trap and a three-phase separator.
The plug catcher is connected to the wellhead and is used to remove any large solids from the drilling and completion to avoid damaging the other separation equipment.
The sand trap removes finer solids present in the production stream, while the three-phase separator removes water and condensate from the gas.
Liquid hydrocarbons may be collected during completion and sold for additional revenue. Water is typically stored in water tanks for later treatment or disposal. If necessary, captured gas may enter a portable dehydrator at the well site to remove heavy moisture from the gas before it enters the sales pipeline.
