{"id":25839,"date":"2013-03-27T06:00:22","date_gmt":"2013-03-27T11:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=25839"},"modified":"2013-03-27T15:55:27","modified_gmt":"2013-03-27T20:55:27","slug":"waterless-fracking-makes-headway-in-texas-slowly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2013\/03\/27\/waterless-fracking-makes-headway-in-texas-slowly\/","title":{"rendered":"Waterless Fracking Makes Headway in Texas, Slowly"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Jennifer Whitney<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This article is part of an occasional series on water and hydraulic fracturing by the Texas Tribune<\/a> and StateImpact Texas<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Call it hydraulic fracturing \u2014 without the hydro.<\/p>\n

In most hydraulic fracturing operations, several million gallons of water, together with sand and chemicals, get pumped down a hole to blast apart rock that encases oil or gas. But with water increasingly scarce and expensive around Texas, a few companies have begun fracking with propane or other alternative liquids.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t use any water,\u201d said Eric Tudor, a Houston-based official with\u00a0GasFrac<\/a>, a Canadian company that fracks with propane geland butane. \u201cZip. None.\u201d At a GasFrac operation in South Texas last month, a sticker on one worker’s hard hat showed\u00a0a red slash through the word H2O.<\/p>\n

Water-free fracking still remains an early-stage technology, with potentially higher initial costs than conventional fracking methods. But as lawmakers and oil regulators focus on the large quantity of water used for fracking wells, the concept is getting a closer look.<\/p>\n

GasFrac\u00a0has led the way, bringing its propane fracking operations to Texas, and there is talk of using other substances like\u00a0carbon dioxide<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0nitrogen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“We’ve looked at [propane fracking], and I would say that absolutely our industry is open to all possibilities,” said Michael Dunkel, the director of sustainable development for Pioneer Natural Resources, in testimony last month before a joint hearing of the House Energy Resources and Natural Resources committees.<\/p>\n

Waterless fracking is \u201ca viable technology for sure,\u201d said David Yoxtheimer, an extension associate with the Marcellus Center for Outreach & Research at Penn State University. However, he noted, there is a reason that companies use water, namely that it is “virtually incompressible” and thus is very effective in bringing pressure against, and ultimately breaking up,\u00a0rock.<\/p>\n

Currently there are no special rules on fracking with propane or other nonwater liquids in Texas, according to Christi Craddick, one of three members of the Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates the oil and gas industry. The technology is \u201cexciting\u201d but still rare, she said, and no rule changes are on the horizon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll see as the technology evolves if our rules need to evolve,\u201d Craddick said last week in an interview.<\/p>\n

Tudor, of GasFrac, said his company began working in Texas in 2010, after fracking its first well in Canada in 2008. It has done roughly 100 fracks in Texas so far, he estimated. (Some wells get fracked multiple times.) Much of the work has been in South Texas. A recent job bored into the San Miguel formation, which is a relatively shallow formation in the vicinity of the Eagle Ford Shale. But GasFrac has also done \u201ca couple of prototype fracks\u201d in West Texas, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re just getting started,” Tudor said.<\/p>\n

Academics see a number of challenges associated with propane\u00a0<\/strong>fracking, which few if any companies are experienting with in Texas, apart from GasFrac. First, according to Yoxtheimer, \u201cyou\u2019ve got to truck in a lot of propane,\u201d which can be expensive. He also said the propane \u201cworks less effectively in deeper formations where you need to build up more pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tudor disagrees that these issues pose problems. He pointed out that the virtually all the propane \u2014 which is a byproduct of natural gas processing and oil refining \u2014 gets reused. Supplies of propane come from Corpus Christi, he said, and the fuel is “easily available” in South Texas. “We won’t cause any shortages,” he said.<\/p>\n

That is an implicit contrast with the considerable water needs of conventional fracking, which already\u00a0accounts for a double-digit percentage of water use in some rural Texas counties<\/a>. The water leftover from fracking operations typically does not get reused. Instead, it gets discarded into a disposal well. (The Texas Railroad Commission on Tuesday\u00a0approved rules<\/a> to make it easier for companies to recycle water.)<\/p>\n

Tudor also said that his company had fracked at depths well over 10,000 feet.<\/p>\n

An advantage of propane fracks, said Yoxtheimer, is that they avoid the damage to the oil and gas-producing formation that water can cause.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re using water, the water can actually block off or at least impede the flow of hydrocarbons,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Tudor agreed, saying that his company could recover a higher percentage of the oil or gas with propane than with a traditional water frack job. It was this increased production, rather than the reduced use of water, that enticed GasFrac’s customers, he said.<\/p>\n

David Burnett, research coordinator at the Department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University, said that more study is needed.\u00a0Evidence that the wells fracked with propane are more productive is \u201csort of anecdotal data,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

As for the risks of handling flammable material like propane, \u201cOur industry is used to handling high-pressure gas and pumping flammable liquids,\u201d Burnett said. \u201cIt\u2019s not an issue if the equipment is designed properly.\u201d The risks, he added, are \u201cno more worrisome than a propane tank on the edge of town.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tudor said that his company had done 2,000 or more fracks by now, with only one \u201cminor incident in Canada\u201d in which a worker got blisters while some equipment was being shut off. Any leaks, Tuder said, can be \u201cquarantine[d], and \u201cwe\u2019re always hooked up to a flare\u201d that can release the gas if needed. The company uses thermal cameras to monitor \u201chot areas\u201d remotely.<\/p>\n

As GasFrac\u2019s technology spreads, other companies are also trying to use less water. In testimony last month before the joint hearing of the House Natural Resources and House Energy Resources committees, Glenn Gesoff, an official with BP who also chairs the water committee of the Texas Oil and Gas Association, told lawmakers that there were “a number of tests going on” in waterless fracking and fracking that uses significantly less water. In addition to propane, he said, work is ongoing with carbon dioxide and nitrogen.<\/p>\n

“They’re in the development phase,” Gesoff said. “There are some safety concerns.”<\/p>\n

Marathon Oil has begun using a new formula, which it describes as a\u00a0\u201c<\/strong>guar mix commonly used in ice cream and other food products,\u201d to reduce its water use. Guar is a\u00a0small bean that can thicken water<\/a>, and the \u00a0thicker fluid can carry the sand and other elements \u201cwhile simultaneously using less water,\u201d said Lee Warren, a Marathon Oil spokesman, in an email.<\/p>\n

Over the last 18 months, she said, Marathon has cut its water use by 45 percent per well.<\/p>\n

Terrence Henry of\u00a0<\/em>StateImpact Texas<\/em><\/a>\u00a0contributed reporting.<\/em><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With water increasingly scarce and expensive around Texas, a few companies have begun hydraulic fracturing \u2014 without the hydro.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":143,"featured_media":25869,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[59],"tags":[15,22,21,50],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25839"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/143"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}