Cline’s letter was especially relevant because he holds a Ph.D. as a petroleum reservoir engineer and geologist, and has spent 30 years in petroleum reservoir modeling, assessment and fluid flow analysis.

We encourage you to read the full letter, which is an excellent example of informed citizens who have stepped up to educate their fellow neighbors on the truth behind frac’ing and the importance it poses to our nation’s energy dependence.

“There are an estimated 380 billion barrels of undiscovered oil and gas north of the Arctic Circle that remain to be found, of which 84 percent is expected to occur in offshore areas,” says Peter Zickerman, Executive Vice President and Head of Strategic Investments for seismic explorer Polarcus in Dubai. “Until the world finds alternative energy sources, the quest to find new oil reserves and maximize extraction from existing fields remains paramount.”

Places like the Gulf of Mexico and Northwest Europe, which have been explored several times over, require companies to constantly fine-tune their data-gathering techniques to find hydrocarbons through deeper and more complex geology. “Planning starts with geological objectives,” explains Zickerman, “and the right plan provides the geological solution, not just the technology itself, and that’s been our breakthrough.”

The growth of unconventional exploration is having a huge impact on the oil and gas industry on land and at sea. These unconventional reserves, characterized by tight shale rock, are challenging for producers and have only recently become economically viable with the advent of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing.

MicroSeismic, Inc.’s Mike Mueller, Vice President of Analysis, said,  “There are tremendous unconventional oil and gas resources being developed onshore all over North America and internationally. Offshore unconventional resources are also plentiful but present an additional development challenge in that they tend to be in very deep water.”

The unconventional geologic opportunity is called the Lower Tertiary or Paleogene Trend (largely sandstone), characterized by tight reservoirs which have to be stimulated by injecting fluids and propellants in order to open up oil and gas flow – the fracing process. In an offshore drilling scenario, vertical wells could be drilled in 5,000 feet of water through 20,000 feet of sediment and salt and into a pre-salt interval, where stimulating in the pre-salt could begin.

“Early exploration in the Paleogene Trend in the Gulf of Mexico indicates it may contain more oil in one place than has been discovered in all other Gulf of Mexico exploration and production activities to date,” says Mueller. “And operators active in the Paleogene will need multistage hydraulic fracturing to complete wells and achieve production rates that make the fields economical in the face of increasing exploration and development costs that are in the tens of billions of dollars. In this emerging market, operators are turning to hydraulic frac monitoring to protect their investment and provide feedback on the effectiveness of their frac programs.”

MicroSeismic pioneered a method of monitoring using an array of cables containing geophones, which establishes a large two-dimensional listening device. The passive seismic data gathered 24/7 is critical to measuring pressure and stress changes and borehole failures, which can be transmitted back to an onshore office for analysis. The results are made securely available to clients anywhere in as little as five minutes. “In the hydraulic fracturing monitoring market, the systems MicroSeismic deploys are distinct from the legacy downhole technology and can be implemented offshore with existing seismic acquisition technology,” Mueller explained. The company has been testing the technology in an offshore installation for BP in Norway for the past 10 years.

In the post-Macondo era, Mueller advocates passive seismic technology as new areas of exploration and development open up and new environmental regulations take hold. “The unconventional revolution is a game-changing, 25-to-50-year process. In the U.S., the need for oil import volumes is going down. We’re reversing a trend that has been in place for 30 years or more. It’s astonishing.” And it all begins with a seismic survey.

Some of the interesting points Steve made:

- The link between waste water wells, which are used to dispose of the water used in fracking under ground, and earthquakes isn’t new. It goes back to the 1960′s.

– While “earthquake” is a scary term, the quakes linked the waste water wells aren’t dangerous.

– If it turns out that waste water wells are causing earthquakes, there are a lot of things the industry can do such as changing the way they pump water into these wells to recycling and re-using the water.

In short, there’s not a lot of cause for alarm in this USGS study. There is, however, a lot of political reasons on the environmental left to try and manufacture alarm and hamstring fossil fuel production.

Another great job from Energy in Depth!

 In 1976 Tillerson went to East Texas to follow around rigs drilling for natural gas and complete the wells.  Completion means pumping water, sand, and chemicals down into a well at high pressure, causing cracks in the stone where the gas was trapped and allow more of it to flow; or frac’ing.

Today Tillerson is betting much of his company’s future growth — and a good portion of his legacy — on the promise of frac’ing. Two years ago Tillerson engineered a $35 billion acquisition of natural-gas producer XTO Energy in large part to buy the company’s hydraulic-fracturing expertise. It is easily the largest deal the energy giant has done since the $88 billion mega-merger with Mobil orchestrated by Tillerson’s predecessor, Lee Raymond, in 1999.

In buying XTO, the 60-year-old Tillerson has further reshaped the company. In 2011, Exxon reported sales of $486 billion — a gargantuan number that could vault it past Wal-Mart (WMT) to recapture the No. 1 position in this year’s Fortune 500. The $41 billion in profit it earned was the second-largest total in corporate history, behind only the $45 billion record that Exxon set in 2008. Those astronomical earnings have been driven by persistently high oil prices. But today Exxon, the prototypical oil giant, gets about 50% of its production from, and has 50% of its reserves in, natural gas.

It’s not just Exxon that has profited. Over the past several years frac’ing has unlocked a vast new source of energy supply in the U.S. Advanced forms of the process that Tillerson used in the 1970s, combined with innovative methods of drilling, have enabled energy companies to extract huge quantities of natural gas and oil trapped in shale rock — assets that were previously thought to be either impossible or uneconomic to produce.

It is widely thought that the U.S. now has 100 years or more of domestic gas supply at current consumption rates. Already there has been a frenzy of exploration. The shale gas industry employed more than 600,000 workers in the U.S. in 2010, according to IHS, and by 2015 it will contribute some $118 billion to the U.S. economy.

Large shale deposits in South America, China, and Europe mean that it should eventually be a global trend as well. The International Energy Agency estimates that the world currently has a 250-year supply of natural gas. “In my 50 years of following the energy business, this is by far the biggest event that I’ve seen,” says John Deutch, an MIT professor and a former CIA director who last year chaired a Department of Energy subcommittee on shale gas.

Many military men and women are accustomed to long hours, often in extreme conditions or operating heavy equipment. So it’s a natural transition that veterans returning home to Pennsylvania might pursue similar work upon their return, where the Marcellus Shale formation underlays about 60 percent of the state.

Scott Grady of Pittsburgh’s Veterans Leadership Program has worked with about 20 veterans hired for jobs in the shale industry over the past two years. He cited veterans’ “intangible” skills, such as a respect and knowledge of safety procedures, discipline and an accelerated learning curve as further proof the industry is a good match.

“I think the talent pool is here,” he said. “I think they are out there and they can fill a lot of jobs with a little bit of training.”

That includes a four-week shale gas training course, a required introduction into the way rigs are operated. It’s offered at community colleges and adult learning centers in the area; at least two local training centers bundle this training and a commercial driver’s license course for $7,000. The Veterans Leadership Program provides grants to help offset that cost, and the GI Bill covers many training courses.

“Your options are to go sit in a college classroom and go to school for four years and get a bachelor’s degree — or you could go to a four-week training program,” Mr. Grady said. “I wish I would have had that option.”

Shale jobs include various operators for drilling and hydraulic fracturing teams. Truck drivers are needed to haul waste water and equipment, as well as welders and workers to operate rigs and tend wells. Most careers are field-based.

While many have heard of the obvious economic benefits and consumer savings made possible thanks to this development, a new video “Women of the Marcellus” produced by Energy In Depth highlights the stories of families whose lives have improved thanks to Marcellus development.

The video highlights a dairy farmer in Troy who expanded operations and a young couple that purchased a bed and breakfast in Towanda – and there are many other stories of families brought together from Marcellus development.

With the Marcellus employing over 229,000 Pennsylvanians (over two percent of the commonwealth’s population), it’s comforting to know that our younger generation can find work and families can stay together as a result.

The argument for frac’ing in this letter offered several points for consideration, including:

By enacting a ban or even a moratorium, a town is putting itself at risk of being sued and costing taxpayers enormous amounts of money, because people have every right to use every part of their property.

Natural gas exploration has been proven safe and the industry would be working under the world’s strictest regulations if New York State opens its doors to the industry. (Second that!)

Currently, property owners are at risk of losing their homes and family farms to foreclosures. The natural gas industry could be the only saving grace for our area.

With the regulations New York has, it’s difficult to argue it will not be monitored closely. There is no justification under these circumstances for taking away property rights.

The writer concludes by encouraging others to, “Protect your town by telling your elected officials not to enact bans on the natural gas industry.”  

We applaud this reader’s moxie in stating the facts for what they are-facts-for and taking a stand where so many fear to do so. Hopefully New York is listening, too!

Featured in the now debunked documentary “Gasland,” the Susquehanna County village of Dimock has been at the center of a fierce debate over drilling, in particular the process of hydraulic fracturing, or frac’ing.

State environmental regulators previously claimed that Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. contaminated the aquifer underneath homes along Carter Road in Dimock with explosive levels of methane gas, although they later determined the company had met its obligation to provide safe drinking water to residents.

A Cabot spokesman said in a statement Friday that the “data confirms the earlier EPA finding that levels of contaminants found do not possess a threat to human health and the environment.”

“Importantly, the EPA again did not indicate that those contaminants that were detected bore any relationship to oil and gas development in the Dimock area, particularly given the fact that any contaminants are more likely indicative of naturally-occurring background levels or other unrelated activities,” the statement said.

Much of the public debate over gasoline prices has involved oil company taxes and what measures the government can take to control prices at the pump, but Odum suggested other matters are more significant.

“We think all the focus on that is actually the wrong discussion,” Odum said. “The world oil price is set outside of these companies. The question that high gasoline prices in the U.S. ought to raise is how do we impact the amount we use and how do we impact the amount we make ourselves – that is exactly where the conversation ought to go.”

Odum said that long-term price solutions will come from conservation, such as vehicle fuel efficiency standards, and from further development of U.S. energy resources, including expanded exploration in the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic.

Turning to an opposite price issue, Odum said the low price of natural gas might cause some short-term pain, but could fuel a manufacturing revolution in the U.S.

Natural gas was down 2.3 cents to $2.13 per million British thermal units in trading Friday on the New York Mercantile Exchange – its lowest close in more than 10 years.

“We have gone from the standpoint of thinking we were going to import to keep our systems going to being able to export, if we choose to do so, we have discovered so much,” Odum said.

Odum said that an important next step should be to develop a national energy plan, to better guide how natural gas could supplement oil as a transportation fuel.

That use is limited now by lack of natural gas fueling infrastructure and by shortages of pipeline, storage and refining capacity.

Addressing the 40th annual Howard Weil Energy Conference in New Orleans, Papa touted his company shift to oil production from natural gas and emphasized the impact of the industry’s shift on historical US oil production.

“We believe that in 2015, US production will be 1.5 million b/d higher than today for the first significant increase in 40 years,” he said.

Papa noted that US oil production peaked about 1970 at a rate of 9 million to 10 million b/d.

After years of decline, US oil production has risen the last two years to a current level of about 5.8 million b/d.

Papa credited the revolution in horizontal drilling for exploitation of shales and predicted further growth to add another 1.5 million b/d by 2015, bringing average US output up to a level of more than 7 million b/d.