Why no reporting on the start and finish dates drilling this world-record onshore lateral?
And why no location provided for such a significant event?
Is it because AER, Shell and Ensign know the long lateral is causing earthquakes?
Ensign drills Canada’s longest well at Fox Creek by Maurice Smith, Feb. 15, 2018, JWN Energy
Ensign Energy Services Inc. has drilled Canada’s longest land-based well to-date, with a measured depth of 7,770 metres. [4.828 miles.]
[Which is it, length or depth?
AER reports maximum depth to top of Duvernay at only 5000 m below ground surface.
The Duvernay dips to the southwest, with structural elevations ranging from approximately 900 metres
(m) below sea level in the northeast to approximately 3600 m below sea level near the deformed belt
(Appendix 2). Depths to the top of the Duvernay range from 1700 to 5000 m below ground surface. Duvernay Reserves and Resources Report (December 2016)
2017 03 21: The world’s deepest oil well is over 40,000 feet deep
The world’s deepest oil well, known as Z-44 Chayvo, goes over 40,000 ft (12 km) into the ground….
Before the Z-44 Chayvo Well and other holes like it were drilled on the eastern side of Russia, the famous Kola Superdeep Borehole held the record for drill depth.
2016 02 26: Shaking hands with the Devil – The deepest hole ever drilled
… The USSR embarked on drilling a hole in 1970 on the Kola Peninsula located east of Finland. By 1983 the project, named the Kola Superdeep Borehole, had reached a depth of 12,000 meters (39,000 ft).
The project was then halted for a year to celebrate the milestone achievement. [Deepest rape by man?]
When drilling resumed, the drill went 66 further meters until a 5,000-meter section of drill string (interconnected lengths of pipe) twisted off and was left in the hole.
After the first hole was botched, drilling began again at 7,000 meters, in a new hole called SG-3. In 1989, 19 years after researchers had broken ground, the project reached 12,262 meters (40,230 ft = 7.6 mi). Although the original plan was for the hole to be drilled to 15,000 meters (49,000 ft), the project was unable to proceed due to the temperatures encountered. In recent years a few longer boreholes have been drilled, but the Kola Superdeep Borehole still holds the record for the deepest artificial point on earth.
… The project discontinued drilling operations in 1992 and was closed down in 2005 due to lack of funding. Equipment for drilling and research has since been scrapped and the site abandoned in 2008. The borehole itself remains [leaking how much methane etc?], with a metal cap drilled and welded to seal off the hole.
The drilling endeavor had remained largely secret and managed to inspire urban legends in the U.S. about a “well to hell” located in an unidentified area in Siberia. [Emphasis added]
2015 03 25: Deepest Wells Drilled In 2014 Were Located In The Liard Basin, Deep Basin
Canada’s top-10 deepest wells in 2014 were drilled in the Liard and Deep Basin.
Projected zones for the horizontal wells included the BesaRiver, Duvernay, Notikewin and the Montney, and the top-10 list was dominated by operators Apache Canada Ltd., Encana Corporation, ConocoPhillips Canada Limited and Seven Generations Energy Ltd.
The two deepest wells, reported by Apache Canada, had total depths of close to seven kilometres. [Emphasis added]
If it’s both, what’s the depth and length of this longest in Canada lateral?]
Completed in Fox Creek in January in partnership with Shell Canada, [NAM, which is Royal Dutch Shell in partnership with Exxon Mobile, has been causing billions of dollars in earthquake damages to homes in the Netherlands. Years ago, the court ordered NAM to pay restitution to homeowners, so far, just a lot of hot air, more drilling and and many more damages in quakes has been given to the harmed homeowners by the corporate abusers. Did Exxon and Shell create NAM so that local people won’t know what brutes are destroying their homes?] the well was drilled by an Ensign ADR 1500S super spec rig. Despite the well’s record depth, the time from spud to rig-release was less than fourteen days.
The well marks the first well drilled by this rig after the deployment of Ensign’s Edge Controls, a drilling performance technology system that optimizes rate of penetration, reduces downhole vibration and improves the smoothness of the curve.
Ensign said it has seen similar performance gains from the Edge Controls system in other regions.
Find business opportunities and analyze competition and market share with Rig Locator, your source for information on western Canada’s drilling rig fleet.
The results achieved reflect the incremental value that Ensign’s best-in-class technology, equipment and processes can bring to a customer’s well program, the company said in a statement.
The Ensign Edge Controls technology system is proving to be an excellent addition to its service portfolio, providing a strong competitive advantage in today’s marketplace by maximizing performance and decreasing down-time, the company added. [Emphasis added]
This media also reporting lateral length as depth: Fox Creek; Canada’s deepest land-based well, Ensign on the project by Maurice Smith, jwnenergy.com in Dawson Creek Mirror, February 17, 2018
Ensign Energy Services Inc. has drilled Canada’s longest land-based well to-date, with a measured depth of 7,770 metres.
Completed in Fox Creek in January in partnership with Shell Canada, the well was drilled by an Ensign ADR 1500S super spec rig. Despite the well’s record depth, the time from spud to rig-release was less than fourteen days.
The well marks the first well drilled by this rig after the deployment of Ensign’s Edge Controls, a drilling performance technology system that optimizes rate of penetration, reduces downhole vibration and improves the smoothness of the curve.
Ensign said it has seen similar performance gains from the Edge Controls system in other regions.
The results achieved reflect the incremental value that Ensign’s best-in-class technology, equipment and processes can bring to a customer’s well program, the company said in a statement.
The Ensign Edge Controls technology system is proving to be an excellent addition to its service portfolio, providing a strong competitive advantage in today’s marketplace by maximizing performance and decreasing down-time, the company added.
Also reporting Canada’s longest lateral length as depth: 2018 02 16: Shell Canada, Ensign Energy Services and Pacesetter Drill Canada’s Longest Well: a 25,000-Foot Duvernay in 14 Days
Ensign Energy Services Inc. successfully drilled Canada’s longest land-based well, to-date, with a measured depth of 7,770 meters, or 25,500 feet.
[Refer also to:
2017 10 20: PA’s Deep Well Services Helped Drill World’s Longest Shale Well
In June MDN brought you the news that Eclipse Resources had drilled yet another world record-breaking shale well in the Ohio Utica (see Eclipse Breaks Record Again – New Longest Shale Well in World!). Eclipse drilled the Outlaw C 11H in Guernsey County, a Utica well that is an incredible 19,588 feet long horizontally (total measured depth of 27,739 feet). That’s 3.7 miles long–all nearly two miles deep underground. It is an engineering marvel. And it’s not the first record-breaking well they’ve drilled. Eclipse holds the previous two records for world’s longest horizontal wells, drilling the Purple Hayes, 18,500 feet long [3.8038 miles] (see Eclipse Res. 1Q16: Drills Longest Shale Well Ever! “Purple Hayes”), and then the Great Scott 3H well, 19,300 feet long (see Great Scott! Eclipse Drills New Longest Lateral in World – in Utica). All three of Eclipse’s “longest ever” shale wells are located in Guernsey County. [Emphasis added]
2018 01 15: These days, oil and gas companies are super-sizing their well pads
Dave Elkin remembers in the earlier days of the Marcellus when EQT drilled three wells from a single well pad and it was considered a technological marvel.
“The greatest thing since sliced bread,” Mr. Elkin, a senior vice president of asset optimization at EQT Corp., thought at the time.
It was a quaint memory that contrasts sharply with the company’s and industry’s new normal: superpads — concrete platforms that can house 30 wells, maybe even 40, with long horizontal tentacles stretching underground for up to 4 miles in each direction.
… Downtown-based EQT — now the largest producer of natural gas in the U.S. — is leading the Marcellus pack in supersizing its well pads, with about a dozen sites permitted to hold 20 or more wells.
There’s the Big Sky pad in Nottingham, Washington County, with 26 permitted wells. The Strope pad in Franklin Township, Greene County, with 28. The Prentice pad in Forward Township has 37 wells permitted on it.
… Cogar is one of the EQT’s largest pads to date. The company averages about 17 or 18 wells on a well pad.
Supersizing the wells — drilling more wells per pad and extending those wells farther underground — was a key motivator for EQT’s $6.7 billion acquisition of Canonsburg-based Rice Energy Inc. last year. The consolidation is a sign that the shale game is maturing.
… In the Permian Basin in Texas, Encana has built a “mega pad” that is slated to hold 64 wells. It has been described as spanning the length of eight football fields and the width of two and is, by the company’s account, a very busy site with multiple rigs operating in tandem. More than half of the wells on the “mega pad” have already been drilled, and the Canadian company is targeting rock formations at several different depths.
The same is happening in the Marcellus and Utica shales. EQT’s largest pads — “upwards of 40 wells” — Mr. Schlosser said, will be the ones with both Marcellus and Upper Devonian wells on them. The company believes the two layers of gas-rich shale should be developed together to prevent cracks between the two from draining valuable gas.
In Greene County and further south, where EQT is likely to target only one shale layer, the company will probably average close to 20 wells per pad, he said.
Squeezing even that many on a single site requires some creative geometry in the subsurface.
Instead of drilling all of the wells straight down to what is called a kickoff point and then curving the pipe horizontally at the end, EQT is starting the kickoff process for some wells at shallower depths and taking its time with that curve before reaching the final destination. This ensures that the wells don’t crowd each other underground.
In a cross section of the earth, this kind of well would look less like an upright chair and more like a recliner.
For neighbors of such sites, the superpad trend means the oil and gas company will be visiting more often and staying longer.
If it takes a company about a year to drill and complete a well pad with a handful of wells, developing one with 15 or 20 is at least a three-year commitment, Mr. Schlosser explained, because EQT drills the wells in batches.
“We split them out in runs of five or six at a time,” he said.
Otherwise, the pipelines that collect the gas would need to be huge and would quickly become obsolete since shale gas volumes drop off significantly in the first year. The same goes for water hauling infrastructure.
So drillers will finish the first batch, let the gas flow, wait for it to taper and then start on the next half a dozen to fill the pipes back up.
As for the length of the horizontal wells, Mr. Elkin said the current “economic and technological limit” is 21,000 feet, or 4 miles. In the Utica Shale, which is deeper than the Marcellus, horizontal wells may stretch some 25,000 feet. [4.7348 miles]
But that’s just for today.
Considering that in 2009, a Chesapeake Energy brochure proudly announced an eight-well “superpad” in the Haynesville Shale, all limits are subject to rapid change. [Emphasis added]
2018 02 09: “Insane” Greed: Fox Creek Shakes as Frackers Drill for Condensate to Dilute Bitumen
Two world records for Fox Creek, Alberta?
Longest lateral and largest earthquake caused by frac’ing?
Are the recent quakes at Fox Creek/Little Smokey caused by Ensign/Shell?
01/03/2018 (003) 18:58:07 54.4653 -117.652 1.43M
01/04/2018 (004) 13:50:56 54.5301 -117.5885 1.88M
01/06/2018 (006) 04:09:44 54.4593 -117.5851 1.89M
01/20/2018 (020) 03:48:23 54.5216 -117.5268 2.23M
01/23/2018 (023) 11:09:28 54.5956 -118.3865 2.43M
01/27/2018 (027) 12:33:54 54.4276 -117.6707 2.01M
01/30/2018 (030) 11:58:42 54.463 -117.5969 1.97M
02/01/2018 (032) 11:24:22 54.2894 -117.0633 1.93M
02/01/2018 (032) 17:09:30 54.3527 -117.5739 1.99M
02/08/2018 (039) 04:05:12 54.4678 -117.5814 1.94M
02/13/2018 (044) 19:17:03 54.2249 -116.643 2.11M
02/14/2018 (045) 05:04:10 54.5125 -118.0037 1.63M
02/14/2018 (045) 07:45:01 54.49 -117.8561 1.43M
02/14/2018 (045) 13:43:49 54.5544 -117.9044 2.01M
02/15/2018 (046) 06:28:27 54.5049 -117.9701 1.65M
02/15/2018 (046) 07:37:29 54.5197 -117.8878 1.51M
02/15/2018 (046) 08:15:49 54.5602 -117.9163 1.67M
02/15/2018 (046) 09:57:01 54.5533 -117.9293 1.69M
02/15/2018 (046) 12:06:52 54.5182 -117.9045 1.65M
02/15/2018 (046) 12:08:18 54.57 -117.9139 1.6M
02/15/2018 (046) 12:44:22 54.5078 -117.8983 1.62M
Earthquakes at Fox Creek (Little Smokey) above, listed by AER (to Feb 15).
2018/02/13 19:17:03 54.25 -116.89 1.0 1.8M
171 km NE of Jasper,AB
2018/02/13 16:35:23 54.45 -117.92 5.0 2.3M
174 km N of Jasper,AB
2018/02/13 15:08:05 54.44 -117.97 5.0 2.3M
174 km N of Jasper,AB
2018/02/14 13:43:48 54.50 -118.02 1.0 2.5M
179 km N of Jasper,AB
2018/02/14 15:21:19 54.48 -118.03 1.0 2.1M
177 km N of Jasper,AB
2018/02/14 07:45:02 54.44 -118.06 5.0 2.0M
172 km N of Jasper,AB
2018/02/14 05:04:12 54.42 -118.11 5.0 2.0M
171 km N of Jasper,AB
Earthquake data above, listed by Natural Resources Canada (to Feb 15).
Yellow pins = February & January 2018 earthquakes listed by AER & NRC
Red pins = Shell info on file with AER, copied below
Locations are approximate.
Background information on Shell at AER’s website
Notice of Application [It’s in the area of the above quakes]
Application No. 1822109
Shell Canada Limited
Fox Creek Area
The Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) has received Application No. 1822109 from Shell Canada Limited (Shell) for a water licence and associated infrastructure in the Fox Creek area in Sections 11,13,14,15, and 19, Township 63, Range 20, West of the 5th Meridian. The water licence and associated infrastructure are required to support Shell’s development of the Duvernay Formation in the Fox Creek area.
This application is being submitted under the AER’s play-based regulation (PBR) pilot project, which enables applicants to apply for multiple activities in one application. Shell has also filed another application under the PBR pilot project, Application No. 1822111, for four multiwell pads and associated infrastructure. More information on that application and the PBR project is available on the AER website, www.aer.ca.
Description of the Application
Shell has applied under the Water Act, Pipeline Act, and Public Lands Act, for the following:
- a licence for the diversion of water from Iosegun Lake, including land access;
- the construction and operation of diversion works and a pumping station, including land access;
- the construction and operation of a water storage pond and associated infrastructure, including land access; and
- the construction and operation of associated roads, water and fuel gas pipelines, including land access.
For a copy of the application, contact
Shell Canada Limited
400 – 3 Avenue SW
Calgary, Alberta T2P 0J4
Attention: Zoe Gulley
Telephone: 403-691-3940
E-mail: email hidden; JavaScript is required
To view the application and supporting documents, use the Integrated Application Registry (IAR) available under Systems & Tools on the AER website www.aer.ca. To receive a copy of the application and supporting documents, submit an information request, as outlined at www.aer.ca/data-and-publications/how-to-order, to
AER Order Fulfillment
Suite 1000, 250 – 5 Street SW
Calgary, Alberta T2P 0R4
Telephone: 1-855-297-8311 (toll free; option 2)
Fax: 403-297-7040
E-mail: email hidden; JavaScript is required
***
THE ROCKS WERE ALIVE! 15:54 Min by The Dictionary of Truth, December 16, 2017