Active drilling rigs in the Barnett Shale took an unusually large drop this week, down eight to 30, as icy weather could have delayed activity in the field, most of which received snow Christmas Day. Half the area's rigs were in Montague and Wise counties, where operators migrated months ago in search of oil and liquids-rich gas. Devon Energy was running seven rigs in four counties, while EOG Resources had five, all in Montague and Cooke counties, according to RigData. Montague was busiest with eight rigs, followed by Wise with seven, and Parker and Tarrant with three each.
Nationally, the rig count dropped 11 to 1,763. Rigs seeking crude oil were down 13, to 1,327, and rigs seeking natural gas were up two, to 431. Five were miscellaneous.
-- Jim Fuquay
The freeze of Feb of 2011 showed how vulnerable our natural gas infrastructure is and complicating that is the interdependency on electricity as our urban compressors are electric. I have questions as to how prepared we at the actual drill sites for freezing temperatures...
1). Have we insulated all exposed piping/flow lines?
2). Do we have in-line heaters between the wellhead and before the separators? If not, then
3). Do we have installations of methanol injection pumps? These cost about $6,800 annually to run/man with a one time upfront investment of about $2,800 at each well.
4). Does our fluid storage tanks have failsafe shut-in devices so that when roads are impassible, and water
evacuation trucks cannot get to the sites that these tanks do not overflow?
5). Does our production separators have exposed equipment/sensors?....if so, can they be housed or insulated?
These are questions I never intended to learn, but feel the need to babysit the industry since Feb 2011 was so “eventful”. Now for the biggest question...who can answer my questions?
Posted by: Kim Feil | December 28, 2012 at 12:59 PM