As far too many of you have recently experienced (Hi, Houstonians and those in the path of Hurricane Beryl), we need as much reliable energy as we can get in today’s world, and the need is only growing.
Exploring all of our energy options—and all the various combinations of them—that may have minimal impact on air quality is key. Enter hydrogen! There’s great potential for a fuel whose main byproduct is water, but there are also several setbacks.
I dive into this potential source of fuel, as well as some advances in seismic that are turning the technology’s main use from finding oil to understanding exactly how, where, and why it’s entering our wellbore and what impacts we might be making on reservoirs during hydraulic fracturing.
Sarah Compton
Editor, Enspired
Seismic Shifts…Philosophically and Technologically
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Like I said, it’s no longer just about “Where is the oil? And can we get to it?” Now, seismic tech is starting to look at much more, including its own impacts on reservoirs. We’ve come a long way!
Where we started: The first tool used to record the details of earthquakes is thought to be a seismoscope invented by Chinese philosopher Chang Heng in AD 132.
Here’s how it worked:
An urn with eight dragon heads oriented in the eight principal directions could release a ball into the open mouth of toads below.
The toad with the ball in its mouth indicated which direction the shaking came from.
Modern approaches: Today, our cutting-edge technology is applied to seismic data collection and analysis primarily in three ways, through:
Fiber
Quantum computing
Multi-parameter full waveform inversion (MP-FWI).
I’m going to cover all three topics in greater detail in an article in the August issue of Explorer, but since I’m most familiar with fiber, I’ll give a primer/sneak peek in this newsletter.
Esteemed experts: Since parts of these topics are a bit beyond the scope of my geo knowledge base, I sought additional expertise.
Dr. Ali Tura, a professor at the Colorado School of Mines, who is working at the edge of geophysical and seismic tech. He shared insights around fiber and quantum computing.
Another longtime friend and geophysicist, Damon Parker, chatted with me about his work and recent developments in MP-FWI.
Fiber, good for data digestion. Ok, that’s more related to a different kind of fiber, but this kind truly is great for recording seismic data in a number of ways. Dr. Tura explained three main sensing methods for fiber, categorized based on the different physics applied in each method.
DTS: Distributed Temperature Surveys. This was my first introduction to fiber more than a decade ago, and it records high-precision temperatures (supposedly to tenths of degrees) along the full path of your wellbore at foot or sub-foot increments.
DAS: Distributed Acoustic Surveys is for vibration or acoustic sensing detected over large distances and harsh environments, such as the inside of a wellbore or the bottom of the ocean.
DSS: Distributed Seismic Surveys is for strain sensing. I think in the industry, this often gets lumped in with DAS, so it was interesting to hear this split out as its own category.
Pros and cons: Fiber can be permanent or removable, so there’s likely a deployment method to fit your need and study.
Advantages include better resolution over space and time, as well as active measurements during various operations such as fracking the well where the fiber is deployed.
Disadvantages include cost, deployment logistics, dataset size logistics, and fragility. Like any instrument, if the fiber is cut/broken at any point, you lose all data after the break point.
The bottom line: Fiber technology has evolved from rarely used tech in science projects to something that could become more of a regular feature in monitoring hydraulic fracturing behavior to guide area best practices.
Dive deeper: For more information from the interviews with Damon Parker and Dr. Ali Tura, check out the Explorer article coming in the beginning of August.
A message from WellDrive
What’s the best way to “bird dog” the data you need, but is all over the place, and in unreadable or incompatible formats? Derek Garland, President of WellDrive, explains to AAPG’s Dr. Susan Nash, just how WellDrive has perfected a system to discover, capture, validate, and analyze data of all types to make decisions quickly, efficiently, and accurately.
Hydrogen isn’t much of a loner (even though it only has one electron 😉) when compared to some of its other Periodic Table counterparts. It tends to react, bond, and be a bit temperamental.
But is hydrogen too finicky and volatile to be a viable high-density renewable option? That’s the ongoing question. But where there’s a problem that needs solving, there’s an opportunity for to solve it…Can we say “Hello, biogeochemistry”?
Hydrogen is usually attached to water or hanging out in a hydrocarbon chain.
Electrolysis can produce hydrogen, but this is a high-cost option and accounts for only about 5 percent of hydrogen gas production. Creating efficiencies in the physical and/or chemical processes here is a huge opportunity.
Most hydrogen gas is produced from fossil fuels. One example is steam methane reforming, which can remove hydrogen from methane. The resultant carbon dioxide can be sequestered onsite. The need for geoscience expertise abounds here, from finding the methane to natural CO2 sequestration reservoirs.
Existing infrastructure can move hydrogen around, though some modifications likely need to be made.
Hydrogen has its naysayers, and that’s not unjustified. It’s a highly explosive gas (I’m looking at you, Hindenburg), expensive, and not easy to convert into a usable fuel.
Methane already is a relatively clean-burning fuel. Is time and effort better spent cleaning up methane combustion rather than extracting hydrogen?
Environmentalists have major issue(s) with hydraulic fracturing. Hydrogen from fossil fuels does nothing to alleviate those concerns.
Because the biggest source of hydrogen is fossil fuels, the same concerns around sustainability exist. At some point—likely/hopefully much further out than predicted—we will run out of fossil fuels. Whether that timeframe is decades or centuries into the future is up for debate, but we’re burning faster than we’re making.
Go deeper: To learn more about some industry plans for hydrogen, read here. Some pros and cons are here, and alternative solution ideas are here.
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