Himalayan Glaciers - Science vs the IPCC

There has been a little controversy recently over the state of glaciers in the Himalayas. There has been much talk about how the glaciers in the region are melting, and thus threatening the water supplies for many nations fed water through rivers that start in those mountains. The stories have dramatized the retreat of the glaciers and used the threat of glacier disappearance, which is tied in the stories to AGW, as means of highlighting the need for remedial action.

However the placers where these glaciers are found are difficult to access, in many cases, and more particularly have been hard to get to on a consistent basis, so as to develop a record of exactly how fast the glaciers are, and have been retreating. For if we accept the existence of the Little Ice Age, and that glaciers around the world have been warming as the globe has warmed since then, the question becomes one of whether the glaciers are, in fact, accelerating.

Rates of retreat of the Altay glaciers of the Pamir in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (From Grove – The Little Ice Age)

Grove noted, however, (in 1988) of the Altay that

It is possible that retreat will not continue unbroken, for latterly positive mass balances have been measured on the five Aktra glaciers.

And just recently there have been other reports of glaciers – in this case some 230 of them around the Karakoram mountains of the western Himalayas – also growing.

"These are the biggest mid-latitude glaciers in the world," John Shroder of the University of Nebraska-Omaha said. "And all of them are either holding still, or advancing." . . . . In the Karakorams, the uptick in glacier mass has come with a welcomed perk. The mighty Indus River, which flows out of China and nourishes northern India and much of Pakistan has experienced an increase in discharge.

Given therefore that there appear to be some discrepancies between the dramatic conclusions that are being drawn, and the actual facts, it is interesting to read a report from the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests where individuals have, over the years, actually gone out to a number of different glaciers feeding down into India, and measured the location of the snouts of the glaciers, and thus been able to determine, over time, how the glaciers are behaving. And their conclusion has been

Himalayan glaciers, although shrinking in volume and constantly showing a retreating front, have not in any way exhibited, especially in recent years, an abnormal annual retreat, of the order that some glaciers in Alaska and Greenland are reported.

To explain that a little more clearly, the studies have shown that there has been no increase in the average speed at which the glaciers are retreating, and that the acceleration that is trumpeted by the IPCC and its followers, does not exist.

Now this news has not been received with enthusiasm by the IPCC. Given that the report discusses actual measurements at the glaciers, beginning as far back as the mid-nineteenth century (see graph above) and going beyond just measuring the position of the snout, to geophysical measurements of the ice thickness which began in 1965. The report details glaciers, such as the Chong Kumdan, which by 1958 had advanced sufficiently far as to threaten to block the Shyok river. And it explains how and when different techniques were used to establish the mass balance of different glaciers.

The report illustrates some of the results that were found in the first decade of study as follows:



As the techniques for analysis have become more sophisticated, so it has been possible to look at the mechanisms by which the glaciers gain and lose mass over period of a year. Generally the glacier gains mass from the snows of winter, and loses it due to melting in the warmer weather of the summer. Given the conditions in the Himalayas it was difficult to make that determination (about winter growth) until satellites came along to provide winter access for observation.

From these studies the report notes

Studies have revealed that the major factor for the negative regimen of the glaciers in the Himalayas is the relatively less snow precipitation during the winter (rather) than enhanced glacier melting in summer.

In other words it is not the global warming that is causing the glaciers to retreat, (the summer melting) but rather that there is not as much snow falling on them in winter. (Which is similar to the cause of the glacier retreat on Mount Kilimanjaro). The amount of relative melt is of concern in India, not just because of the water that it provides for consumption, but also because the water provides motive energy for hydro-electric power generation.

Source Index Mundi.

The report has been criticized because of the small sample size, but it details the technology used, and explains why the models developed in the Alps are not suitable. It has included measuring the melt water

it becomes imperative that round the clock monitoring of water discharge, during the entire melt season- June to September be carried out at as many glaciers as is possible.

Various teams, which are carrying out glaciological studies in the Himalayas, have carried out the monitoring of the glacier melt streams either by erecting a weir, across the melt stream, downstream of the snout; or installing an Auto stage recorder.

These are generally established where the stream course is braded or spread out so that data recording is manageable even at the height of the melt season, when the discharge rate goes up many folds In some cases usage of current meter has also been undertaken. Considerable data has so far been generated and various prediction models devised, yet due to rather poor response from the user agencies this data has remained, by and large, un-tested.

It should be noted that if a glacier stops melting, then the amount of water that it supplies to the rivers, and to the folks downstream depending on that water (particularly when the monsoon fails) will decline.

For the assessment of the glacier ice thickness and the volume thereof, TTS, in their guide lines, had suggested the usage of a rating curve based upon their work in Alps. This rating curve was, however, found to give erroneous results. A rating curve that was suitable for the conditions in the Himalayas was evolved by assessing the thickness of the glacier ice in some selected glaciers by geophysical methods: electric resistivity, magnetic and seismic (refraction) techniques followed by thermal/rotary drilling for confirmation of the same.

The report, in short, provides a detailed and rational explanation of what was done, and the consequent results. That it does not meet with the approval of the head of the IPCC is not surprising, but it is perhaps an example of the way in which this debate is being carried out that on one side you get a detailed set of scientific measurements and on the other (bearing in mind that this is a government agency issued report, backed by a minister) you get, from the IPCC

Pachauri dismissed the report saying it was not "peer reviewed" and had few "scientific citations".

"With the greatest of respect this guy retired years ago and I find it totally baffling that he comes out and throws out everything that has been established years ago." . . . . .schoolboy science.

Scientific measurement versus ad hominem attacks, sadly one can anticipate which side the mainstream media will accept.

Looking back at Peak Global Production of Gold

Yesterday the President of the largest gold mining and production company, Barrick Gold, noted that after ten years of declining production it is time to recognize that the world has seen the peak in gold production. To maintain production ore is being mined with increasingly less gold in it. (The grade of the ore, or metal content, defines whether it is profitable to mine).

Ore grades have fallen from around 12 grams per tonne in 1950 to nearer 3 grams in the US, Canada, and Australia. South Africa's output has halved since peaking in 1970.

The supply crunch has helped push gold to an all-time high, reaching $1,118 an ounce at one stage yesterday.

Gold serves two purposes, firstly it has provided, down through history, a form of currency, though it is not clear whether it was Croesus or the Egyptians who used it in trade, both date back to around 5-600 B.C. and gold coins have flourished since that time. (But before then gold was mined around Mestia, in what is now Georgia, back at the time of Jason and the Golden Fleece (before 1300 B.C.) and used for ornamental wear and art objects). But gold also has a useful function as a metal.

Gold conducts electricity, does not tarnish, is very easy to work, can be drawn into wire, can be hammered into thin sheets, alloys with many other metals, can be melted and cast into highly detailed shapes, has a wonderful color and a brilliant luster. Gold is a memorable metal that occupies a special place in the human mind.

It is even, on occasion, used as a roofing material.

Gold roof to the Small Gold Tile Hall of the Ta’er Temple in Qinghai Province, China.

As with peak oil, the fact that global production has peaked, does not mean that there is no gold left to mine. Rather it means that less gold will be mined each year into the future. It will likely, in time, bring back into debate the environmental costs of mining.

For there are deposits of gold still in the ground that are not mined, in part because of the environmental cost. If you go, for example, to the Malakoff Diggins in California (A state park north of American Hill) you will find tall sandstone cliffs that used to be mined using streams of water from large monitors. However, in excavating the rock it was also disintegrated, and the clay particles were carried down into the Sacramento River, gradually filling the river bed, to the point that in heavy rains the river flooded the surrounding communities. Thus, back in 1886 Judge Sawyer restricted the practice, which largely fell into abeyance. But the gold is still “in them thar hills.” Similarly if one goes up to the valleys outside Fairbanks in Alaska, there is gold in the gravel beds – but is has been largely too expensive, both commercially and environmentally, to recover to this point. One of the more recent discoveries in Alaska has become known as the Pebble Mine Project, but while there may be up to 3 million ounces of gold in the region, there has been strong opposition to development. even though that development continues.

Gold has been a valuable mineral for a long time and for nations all around the world. All the good and easy places to find it, therefore, have been sought after and largely found. The gold deposits that are worked have become smaller of lower value and found in places that are harder to get to. With lower availability, greater demand and higher price, it became more practical to mine and process lower grade deposits and to go deeper into the Earth for the higher grades. Mines in South Africa , and in South Dakota worked down to more than 2 miles below the surface, to recover the ore. And techniques have been developed that recover it in even very small quantities – 3 gm per tonne is an ore that contains very little gold (3 divided by 1000 = 0.003 kg divided by 1000 = 0.000003 tonnes or 3 parts per million). So, while miners can still find the odd nugget when they pan for gold in streams around the country (and there are lots of maps available to tell you where to look), for the large scale levels of production that make a significant impact on the market, you need large deposits of gold with the potential for greater yields, and those places are getting harder and harder to find. And even as one goes deeper the grade of the gold doesn’t necessarily continue.

Harmony Gold said yesterday that it may close two more mines over coming months due to poor ore grades.

Gold production in South Africa had fallen 9.3% year-on-year last September, this in the country that once led the world in gold production.

We haven’t run out of gold yet

Barrick produced 1.9 m ounces of gold last quarter, down from 1.95 m a year earlier. Costs have been "trending down" to $456 an ounce, though rising energy prices pose a fresh threat. Total reserves are 139 m ounces, far ahead of rival Newmont Mining at 86 m.

But production will continue to fall as the reserves become even harder to extract. Beyond a certain point there is not a lot that technology can do, except perhaps to fund ways of getting gold out of veins that are too small and costly to mine at present. But that won’t yield the millions of ounces that are needed to maintain supply. And the industry was not one, in recent years, to invest in that future. When gold can be recovered by soaking crushed rock in a solvent at relatively low cost, there is not a lot of incentive for new ideas. The days of the industrial innovations that used to come from the research labs in South Africa are likely now over.

So, as the oil industry starts its travels down a similar path past peak and into decline, there are a couple of thoughts I would offer.

Firstly it could be pointed out that the gold industry has been able to see the declining production and lack of available prospects for some time. But it is only now, some 9 – 10 years after the decline started, that the industry is publically recognizing the problem.

Secondly one might ask whether there should not be an agency of the government that can independently warn the government and the nation of this before it happens, so that either better mining methods, access to restricted reserves or the development of alternate materials could be hastened. Well actually there was, it was called the U.S. Bureau of Mines and all those tasks were in its charter. But the mining community is a small one, and has not nearly the clout or popularity in Washington that it is though to have, and thus, in 1996 the agency was closed.

Thirdly, even though the story is out there it is unlikely, for a while, to get much media attention, and the vast majority of the world’s population will not either know of the predicament that is now approaching, nor understand why it is going to be something that will impact many aspects of their lives. Until, of course, it does.

And of course gold is only a pre-cursor of other minerals that will soon run short. Few folk realize the role that metals and minerals play in providing their lifestyle, and do not recognize that the value of many metals comes, in part, because there is nothing that can substitute as well for that particular metal in doing a particular job. Unfortunately doing something about it requires vision for an industry that is not favorably viewed by much of the population. It will be interesting to see if that perception changes, or if the industry becomes the target of blame as shortages lead to even further cost increases.

And then, of course, will come oil . . . . .

Russia, Ukraine and the annual gas game

There is a developing tradition at the end of the year, in which Russia gets into a spat with Ukraine about the payment of the Ukrainian gas bill. Gas supplies are curtailed to Ukraine, which immediately passes on the cuts to the Western European nations on the other end of the pipeline, and there is a short-term, very public row, at the end of which gas supplies are re-started and the situation gets pushed under the rug for another year.

In trying to develop a longer term solution to the problem, Gazprom (the Russian gas company) and its partners have been developing two pipelines, one around the North, and one following a Southern route, to bring natural gas to Western Europe without going through Ukraine. Austria was asked to join the southern branch (South Stream) today. At the same time the West has been trying to line up enough gas supplies to run its own pipeline from Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan into Europe without going through Russia; the pipeline is called Nabucco.

None of these pipelines is yet in place, and so, as the winter season starts to arrive one would naturally begin to worry that the traditional drama would play out again this year. Thus Gazprom has hastened to proclaim, in an interview with Bloomberg that this year will be different. Ukraine is paying its bills each month, and as long as that continues then gas will continue to flow. Although, at the same time, there have been the usual heavy hints that if bills aren’t paid then taps will again close. And Ukraine is hinting that to meet those bills it will need money from the International Money Fund. However it is also seeking a loan from Europe. And the latest comments from Ukraine suggest that this years bargaining round is only just starting. The reassurances that Ukraine is providing, while superficially calming, also retain the caveat that could warn of future problems.

"Ukraine is ready to comply with its obligations on gas transit through its territory within the next half a year at least," he (Ukrainian presidential envoy for international energy security Bohdan Sokolovsky) said at a press conference in Kyiv on Nov. 9. . . . . Having 27 billion cubic meters of gas and repaired gas transportation system, Ukraine can guarantee the transit of the Russian gas provided it comes to Ukraine's GTS (Gas Transportation Services)," he said.

It’s that little catch phrase at the end that always seems to generate trouble.

UPDATE: Coincidentally Jerome has written an article that explains in much greater detail the background to this situation and yet comes to somewhat the same conclusion I draw. His article is well worth the read in understanding why, however.

And unfortunately it has been trouble in the pipelines supplying gas either to or from Russia that has caused earlier problems around the Russian perimeter, and there seems to be no indication that this year will be any different.

Unfortunately the situation is not that cut and dried. I have written about the concern that Turkmen gas, normally a significant supplier, through Russia into Ukraine, may not be available this year. Further the drop in prices and demand for Russian gas is giving Gazprom some financial problems, since they have not sold some 8.5 billion cubic meters of gas or so that they had anticipated, on top of the actual 142.5 billion cu m they actually have sold the west this year to date. (In context Gazprom would normally sell about 45 bcm to Europe in the fourth quarter, and that is about the amount of gas that they normally buy from Turkmenistan in a year). Because of the contract sales language Gazprom is thinking of fining its customers for not buying their full allocation.

And as Turkey and Azerbaijan negotiate on getting Azer natural gas for the pipelines through Turkey, the prices for transport that are being negotiated appear similar to those that Russia charges:

According to him,( Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Taner Yildiz) Turkey has offered Azerbaijan a fee of $2.36 per 100 km for transporting every 1,000 cubic meters of the South Caucasus republic’s gas.
“The proposed fees are completely competitive. Russia charges $2.6 for transporting the same volume,” the Turkish minister said.

We recall that during the “gas war” between Russia and Ukraine this January, Kyiv sought to raise transit fees for Russian gas giant Gazprom to $3 per 100 km in case prices for Russian gas increased.

The attempts by Ukraine to get that higher fee have not stopped.

Meanwhile Russian companies are coming under pressure to reduce gas flaring since Prime Minister Putin sees this as a loss in revenue. At the moment Russia is flaring about 20 bcm a year (apparently about a third of that which comes out as a byproduct of Russian oil production).

Incidentally, in regard to my earlier post on Saudi Arabian production, Platts ( has noted that it is not only Asia that saw the reduction in Saudi exports, but that the United States also got a reduced allocation, with imports falling to 745 kbd in August. Whether this is a simple monthly aberration or portends something more dramatic, only time will tell.

Saudi Arabian oil production, OPEC cuts and IEA estimates

It appears that the world economy has started into a slightly more significant phase of growth, at least according to Saudi Arabia. When the recession hit, in order to control prices and maintain at least a semblance of their income, the nations of OPEC instituted a cut in supplies, initially of just over 2 mbd and then, last December again, to a total of 4.2 mbd, that ate up what would have been a global surplus of oil. In that way prices could be brought back to the $65 to $80 dollar range that OPEC prefers.

Over the past few months, as the economy has improved, and oil prices began to move up again, so there has been a gradual slippage in the rigidity with which the supply was curtailed. In the first half of the year, overall the EIA estimated that OPEC was supplying some 28.7 mbd, which it reported as being some 2.6 mbd less than a year earlier. Of those sticking to the OPEC targets, Saudi Arabia has been the most rigorous. Given that it also supplies the greatest amount of crude of the OPEC nations, this also, more than other nation’s restrictions meant that the world supply could be set in balance with the perceived demand, and price controls could be maintained.

In June OPEC reiterated their position that supplies would be restricted, despite future price rises, until the existing global surplus was drawn down. However there was a report, in April, that part of the reason for Saudi’s adherence to policy might have been caused by an inability to sell more than 7.89 mbd.

The question of Saudi capabilities has been a topic of conversation ever since Matt Simmons wrote “ Twilight in the Desert,” yet if one looks at the EIA figures for crude production, Saudi Arabia had a peak in production of 9.7 mbd in July 2008, but had cut back production this year to an average (over the first seven months of the year) of 8.2 mbd, although by July they had increased back to 8.58 mbd, from a low of 8.086 mbd in February. However part of this increase is due to an increase in internal consumption, shown by the relative plot from Energy Export Databrowser. (which includes more than just the crude and distillate that the EIA counts).

Saudi Arabian oil production (Energy Export Databrowser)

The kingdom is uncomfortably aware of this burgeoning demand, and is already seeking ways to provide internal power by other means . Part of the problem has been that they have relied on natural gas to provide much of their internal power, but have discovered that in cutting back on oil production, they have also restricted the amount of natural gas produced. Which might explain their recent request that nations of the world might have to pay extra even when they don’t buy as much oil as they used to.

But those days, already seem to have passed and now, perhaps in order not to let prices start to rise too much, as the global economy appears to be regenerating and demand grows, Saudi Arabia has recognized that it can continue to increase the amount that it itself supplies, without threatening the overall price levels that have now been reached.

The amounts being made available do not fully relax the cuts that Saudi has made in production but nevertheless the removal of some restriction recognizes the change.

one Asian customer expected to receive full contracted volume for the first time in a year . . . . other lifters of crude from the world's biggest oil exporter expected steady supplies for December compared with November and most were still receiving much less than maximum levels.
"It's between 5 and 10 percent more," one source said, with reference to supplies to global firms for December compared with November.
"But we're still nowhere near the level at which we were."

So far OPEC is producing within the constraints that keep market price stable, with varying degrees of compliance to the overall target. However global demand can be anticipated to continue to grow as the effect on demand from the recession fade. China, for example, has just signaled its intent to buy around 1 mbd from Saudi Arabia next year.

The question will then come, as the available spare capacity in OPEC starts to diminish, how quickly will this impact overall price levels. One can envisage there being enough oil still in the pot that supply can meet demand through next year, but prices may rise a little in that time frame.

What happens beyond that? Well that’s where it gets interesting, and the reports that Western estimates of reserves may have been overinflated due to political pressure don’t help build confidence that all we will need to do is tighten our belts a little. And unfortunately that realization may arrive just in time for the next Presidential election.

However the IEA World Energy Outlook (WEO) is due out tomorrow, and it will be interesting to see what the actual predictions are that the IEA (a recently more cautious Agency than the EIA) are actually producing. There have already been stories, which I commented on last week that the IEA were cutting their projections of demand. The question then arises as to how they will address the potential of OPEC to meet even that limited demand.

Oh, and one last thing, I just got around to checking on what was happening with the Arthur Berman situation, and I may be one of the last to find out that the World Oil Editor was fired over the same situation. Boy! Somebody must have trod on some sensitive corns.

Horizontal wells and Gas Shales

This post is one in a series, describing some of the ways in which fossil fuels are produced, and in the current part of the series (listed on the right hand side of the site – you should start at the bottom and work up) we are focusing a little more on the procedures that are being used to recover natural gas from formations such as the Barnett, Fayetteville, Marcellus, Haynesville and Woodford shales. In this particular post I am going to concentrate more on the benefits of horizontal drilling through these shale reservoirs, rather than using the more conventional vertical wells that were used historically. This, and the next three posts in the series are likely to be a bit more technically dense than earlier posts but I am trying to illustrate some of the problems of production, and some of the gains that technology is bringing to help solve some of them. And while the reason for the horizontal wells can be simplified in this graph from Chris McGill, there are a lot of other things that have to be considered in deciding whether or not the horizontal well is going to be worth developing.


Comparative production from a vertical and horizontal natural gas well (Chris McGill). Notice the gain in production, but much shorter life of the horizontal well.

To begin with it’s probably best to start with rock pressure. And to explain this I am going to do some simplification, so, as I ask in most of these “techie talks”, to those who do know better please understand that this is trying to explain concepts, but also please do comment on where I may either accidentally or by error, get something wrong. I am also going to repeat some information from earlier posts, since some of you may not have read them.


As we go deeper into the earth, the weight of the ground above us will also increase. For a very simple measure (and to make the illustrations easier to follow) we can assume that this is around a 1 pound per square inch (psi) increase for every foot deeper we go. So if we were, for example, 10,000 ft down then the pressure in the rock due to that weight would, undisturbed, be around 10,000 psi. (This is about 7 times the pressure that you see coming out of a car wash pressure washer for example).

When a oilwell is drilled vertically down into that rock it does not see this pressure, but it does see a part of it. The reason is that the rock on either side of the hole can now expand into the hole, and we’d rather it didn’t. (It’s somewhat as though you step on a rubber eraser – the eraser will bulge out laterally as it compresses vertically under your weight). The resistant pressure in the horizontal direction can be calculated as a function of the vertical pressure through a ratio known as Poisson’s Ratio. Sufficient for our discussion to say that it can have a value of about 0.3. So that if we are 10,000 ft down, then the vertical pressure on the rock will be around 10,000 psi, and the horizontal pressure will be around 3,000 psi. If the well is vertical then the casing for the well may not have to resist pressures of more than the 3,000 psi level.

Now, if instead of just drilling the well vertically I turned and drilled it out horizontally through the rock, then the hole would now have the 10,000 psi squeezing down vertically, and the 3,000 psi coming in from the side. So the first thought that we have is that the casing (the lining that we put into the hole to make sure that it stays open) has to be a bit stronger. Life gets, however, a bit more complicated than that. When you put a hole into ground that is under pressure, the first response of the rock is to try and move the weight of the rock over the hole onto the rock on the sides of the hole. This roughly doubles the pressure that is on that thin layer. Before the hole was put there that particular rock was held in place by the rock around it, and collectively the mass could carry the original pressure. But now there is no rock where the hole is, and thus the confining pressure on the rock there is less. (In technical terms you have shifted the load from a triaxial confinement under 10,000 psi to a uniaxial load of 20,000 psi. if there was no pressure within the well). The result can be that the rock on the sides of the hole crushes under the load. This then puts crushed rock or sand into the hole, and that interferes with lots of things. Now you can possibly stop that by keeping the pressure high in the liquid that you are using inside the hole to get the drilled rock out (the drilling mud), but if you keep that pressure too high, then the oil/gas won’t flow to the well and so you have to drop it down to a certain level by choking the flow out of the well when, after completing the hole, you go back to start production.

Life also gets a bit more complicated in reality, since the presence of the fluid in the rock tends to even out the pressure within it. So that while, relatively close to the surface, and in a dry rock the ratios may be as I gave them earlier, with a fluid saturated rock, and in an over-pressured region, the horizontal pressure can be as high as 80% or more of the vertical value. The values generally get closer to 100% as the wells go even deeper, but that is another story.

So rock pressure is the first problem that you have to deal with. But why do we drill the horizontal holes in the first place, why can’t we just use the old vertical ones. Well the reason is that the old ones didn’t work very well. And to explain that I am gong to try and re-explain an article from Penn State. (then I’ll give the relevant quote).

Shale is a very fine grained rock, and though gas can gather in the small pores of its structure, if the gas is to flow to a well, then it has to migrate through passages that are very narrow, and thus very resistive to that flow. However, as the shale has been formed under geological pressure and over time, the pressures not only compressed it from mud into shale, but they also caused it to fracture. In the Marcellus shale, for example, the cracks that occurred in the shale are roughly vertical, and form two sets that are perpendicular to one another.

The first advantage that a horizontal well has, over a vertical one, is that the well can penetrate a long way through the rock that carries the oil or gas (OG). The amount of OG that comes from the rock is, in part, a function of how long the length of well is in the rock that carries it. So that while a vertical well might produce say 800 bd from a well that goes straight through a 200 ft thick layer of oil-bearing rock, when the well is drilled so that it goes out he equivalent of 4 miles horizontally through the oil-bearing rock, then the production per day may go up to 10,000 barrels. It is not always that easy to find reservoir data from two adjacent wells, one vertical and one horizontal but I found a paper on Natural Gas by Chris McGill, in 2006 from which I took the following graph. (or those who want to see what projections on NG were just those few short years ago – the paper is worth a cautionary read).

Comparative production from a vertical and horizontal natural gas well (Chris McGill).

It is interesting to note (vide the recent controversy over Arthur Berman’s opinions on horizontal well life stability of production), that the Horizontal well here had an operational lifetime of only a year, as opposed to the ten years of the conventional well.

The second advantage relates to the way in which the fractures lie in the rock. Because they are vertical, a vertical well won’t hit very many of them, and so since these fractures provide an easy flow of OG to the well, rather than the difficult path through just the rock, then the well will not show very much production. (And this was the case with many of these shales when they were tested earlier).

However if the well is horizontal (see figure) then the well will intersect many of these fractures and in drawing the fluid from them will also provide an easy path for fluid to ease out of the rock into the fracture paths, so that the entire rock can be more easily drained.

Simplified picture showing two joint sets (the grid) as they could be intersected by a vertical and a horizontal well.

Now in the picture I have shown one set of joints as being bigger than the other. And that is usually the case, because the horizontal pressure, that earlier I had suggested was the same in each direction, actually usually isn’t. The strongest horizontal pressure will tend to close up those fractures that run perpendicular to it, and tend to open the ones that run parallel with it. Thus it helps to know at the level of the shale, what the pressures in the different directions are (those engineering among us generally refer to them as stresses rather than pressures). The best direction to drill is then perpendicular to the maximum horizontal pressure, if we want to take the best advantage of the fractures in the rock. The only problem with this is that it also increases the pressures on the sides of the borehole, so that if we go that way, and the rock is not that strong, then we may be making the borehole stability worse.

But even with a horizontal well the production may not be that great, because the fractures are still relatively narrow, and so flow won’t be that fast. And so there is another tool that can be used, and that is to deliberately put a crack into the rock on the side of the borehole. On a very small scale, if you look at the picture, you can see a shaded zone around the vertical well. If I could make a crack out from the well at that level and grow it out just a short way you can see that it already intersects two of the better joint sets, whereas at the beginning the well didn’t reach any. And if we could do this from the horizontal well and grow that crack out a goodly distance horizontally, then it would intersect a lot of the vertical fractures and production would become high and useful.

There are, however, three snags to forming and growing that crack, all solvable, but all costing additional money. The first is that if we just grow the crack out and then let the weight of the overlying rock close it up again, then we haven’t made a whole lot of difference. So we have to prop the crack open. For this we need to inject relatively fine grained particles (let’s call it sand, though the technical term is proppant) into the crack in enough quantity that it will fill up the crack and hold it open so that it gives an easy path through the rock to the well for the OG. (We won’t go into what a mess pumping sand at more than 10,000 psi makes of the pump – Halliburton gets paid very nicely to fix those problems).

The second snag is that trying to push sand into a thin crack and get it to go very far can be an exercise in futility. Among other things if you are using plain water the sand tends to settle to the bottom rather fast, and if it fills the crack near the well, it then acts as a filter to stop sand going back further into the slot. So now we change the chemistry of the water by adding what are usually known as long-chain polymers. These chemicals thicken the water so that it will (at relatively low chemical percentages) suspend the sand in the fluid. Because these molecules are also slippery (in another variety they are added to the water in crowd control water cannons to produce what is known as Banana Water – since it makes the street too slippery to stand on) they also reduce the friction between the fluid flow and the walls of the crack, and this also helps carry the sand further back into the crack, and gives the slickwater title to the hydrofrac.

The third snag is a bit more technical. You remember that earlier on I talked about the pressure about the hole causing the sides of the horizontal well to crush. Well at the top and bottom of the well instead of the rock seeing this additional crushing pressure, the shifting of the vertical load to the walls of the hole, can mean that the rock will go into tension, where it is much weaker. As a result cracks can appear in the top and bottom of the horizontal hole. Why is this a problem? Because the easy way to cause a fracture to grow is to fill the well with liquid and increase the pressure of the liquid until the rock breaks. (Hence hydraulic fracture or hydrofrac). But if there is a crack there already then just increasing the pressure in the hole causes that crack to grow and it may not be in the direction we want. And so it is time to call in the engineers (who also don’t come cheap) to do the interesting things that cause the crack to grow in the right direction.

The benefits to all this for the Marcellus has been described by Engelder.

"Conservatively, we generally only consider 10 percent of gas in place as a potential resource," said Engelder. "The key, of course, is that the Marcellus is more easily produced by horizontal drilling across fractures, and until recently, gas production companies seemed unaware of the presence of the natural fractures necessary for magnifying the success of horizontal drilling in the Marcellus."

The U.S. currently produces roughly 30 trillion cubic feet of gas a year, and these numbers are dropping. According to Engelder, the technology exists to recover 50 trillion cubic feet of gas from the Marcellus, thus keeping the U.S. production up. If this recovery is realized, the Marcellus reservoir would be considered a Super Giant gas field. . . . . These fractures, referred to as J1 fractures by Engelder and Lash, run as slices from the northeast to the southwest in the Marcellus shale and are fairly close together. While a vertical well may cross one of these fractures and other less productive fractures, a horizontally drilled well aimed to the north northwest will cross a series of very productive J1 fractures.

The article illustrates that concept with a representation of the horizontal well drilled perpendicular to the joints at an outcrop.

Representation of a horizontal well drilled in the Marcellus, shown against the natural fracture pattern (Source AAPG )

The upfront money may give some pause to prospectors. A typical well that drills straight down to a depth of about 2,000 to 3,000 feet costs roughly $800,000.

But in the Marcellus Shale, Range and other companies hope a different kind of drilling might yield better results — one in which a well is dug straight down to depths of about 6,000 feet or more, before making a right angle to drill horizontally into the shale. That kind of well could cost a company $3 million to build, not counting the cost of leasing the land, Engelder said.

The company, in a December financial report, estimated that two horizontal wells are producing roughly 4.6 million cubic feet of gas per day. Tests on an additional three recently completed horizontal wells showed potential for a total of 12.7 million cubic feet of gas per day. Industry experts call those results promising.

The benefits have also been projected here.And while they may be considerable, it is only after the wells are in production, and not only initial flows, but also well lifetimes are established, that the true benefit will become apparent.

But until some solid, repeatable well data emerges, the Haynesville will remain more diamond in the rough than diamond ring. As BMO Capital Markets analyst Dan McSpirit rightly noted in a report last week: "The proof (of Haynesville economics) is in how the wells get drilled and the rates of return such operations yield." He added, "These are early innings. Lasting value creation should be revealed later in the game."

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The costs and estimates of production came from the time that the original post on this topic was written, and costs (as you may have noted from the comments and from other references I have made) can now get as high as $8 million for a horizontal well. But I will come back and write more about penetrations and hydraulic fracture in the next post.

A grudging admission of error, but the world remains unaware

Very gradually the underpinnings to the “hysterical” side of the Global Warming debate are being eroded. I mentioned at the time, that Secretary of Energy Chu still waves the Mann “hockey stick” curve as a justification for spending more time worrying about future global warming, than the shorter term shortages of petroleum products for the United States consumer. There have been a number of revelations that have cast increasing doubt on that particular curve, favored though it is of politicians.

There have been increasing questions on the data that went into generating the “blade” of the hockey stick, which I discussed in an earlier post after it was revealed that the paper that Keith Briffa wrote that led to the generation of the blade, relied on a very small range of trees, including only one that showed the dramatic uptick of the hockey stick. Briffa recently commented

we noted that the final years of the Yamal ring-width chronology (Briffa, 2000; Briffa et al., 2008) should be used cautiously on the basis that the values for the most recent part of this chronology are based on relatively few individual measurement series and this smaller available sample emphasises the faster growing trees.

Given the subsequent history of the use of that data (vide the movie An Inconvenient Truth inter alia) it can hardly be said that those words of caution were heeded, or even recognized.

Questions on the validity of using that particular data continue, and correlations are now being made with actual local temperature measurements in the same regions as the tree data came from. What emerges from that correlation is

“Warmist” tree ring proxy temperature evidence is falsified directly by local thermometer records.

The data analysis is somewhat intense but well worth working through to understand exactly why that statement is justified.

And there has just been a new paper on this subject published by Devi et al. which argues for the consideration of ecotone movement in the analysis of the tree ring data, and shows that there was a change in the way in which the trees grow, a change which correlates with temperature, that can be traced back to early in the 20th century. (Thanks bender). But it blows another leg out from under the support of the shape of the hockey stick at the more immediate end of the line.

Meanwhile, if one travels back to the other end of the line, and the estimation of what the temperatures were like in the Medieval Warming Period, one has to remember that, prior to publication of the Hockey Stick, curve the IPCC did recognize the existence of those warmer temperatures.

Medieval Warming Period (IPCC 1996) and the curve generated from borehole temperature proxies by Huang and Pollack in 1997.

The difference between the IPCC curve, and that proposed by Mann was highlighted in a review of the borehole data, and can be seen in this curve:

Comparison of Mann’s plot (blue) with that of the earlier IPCC prediction (red), and the plot from Moberg (black). (Source )

Now it turns out that there were some significant questions about the data upon which Dr Mann generated those predictions of Medieval temperature. There exist a large number of scientific papers (which I have referred to in earlier posts) that show that the period did exist. (The very first paper that I looked at when I got curious about this subject showed its existence in the Sargasso Sea, for example). However the curve was itself underpinned among others by data from tree ring cores taken from bristlecone pine trees in the Western United States.

Bristlecone pine tree allowing historic temperature data acquisition.

The validity of using those tree rings has been questioned by experts in forestry and other contemporary evaluations have shown the Medieval warming period that Mann’s graphs did not.

However the curve was also based on other proxy data (i.e. other physical phenomena changes that can be correlated with temperature change). It is interesting to note that Dr Mann is now changing the basis on which his curve was produced though all the while arguing that the basic shape remains unchanged.

Mann’s latest plot of historic global temperatures.

Now given that this does not show any decline in temperature between 1940 and 1970, something clearly shown in the record, the accuracy of this plot, as with earlier ones, is up for grabs, but seems to indicate that the consistent valid criticism leveled at the paper by Steve McIntyre has yet to be completely addressed.

The controversy has moved on to the use of lakebed sediments from Lake Korttajarvi in Finland, which were cored by Mia Tiljander as part of a doctoral dissertation (hence the name Tiljander sediments). Analysis of the use of the data by others has recently led Kaufman to admit he made a mistake in the use of the data while reasserting that the correction merely strengthens his original argument.

That a correction that re-inverts the data strengthens a correlation seems to be odd to me, but then this whole basic argument over the data and its interpretation has been redolent with somewhat dishonest and manipulative practices on behalf of those generating the information that is used by the IPCC and our Secretary of Energy.

When one realizes that much of this manipulation comes from folk that work in the government and are supposed to be disinterested in the results it becomes more irritating. But then one must recognize that their funding and jobs do, to a significant extent, depend on Global Warming being real and man-made.

I would recommend reading the review of all this at the Skeptical Climate Science Primer since this story is told there with many more graphs and details than I can put in the posts that I produce.

Availability and Profitability of Natural Gas and LNG

It is a little difficult to predict, just at the moment, which way the natural gas situation is going to swing over the next year. The number of different events that are contributing to the overall supply of natural gas seem, on the surface, to indicate that there will be more natural gas than is needed. But there is some question as to how much will actually appear, as the year develops.

For those who want everyone to believe that there is no longer a shortage of natural gas there are the additional LNG supplies that are now coming on stream. Just this week Yemen begins shipping its first cargo to Korea, with a second cargo from Belhaf soon to follow. The gas comes from a reservoir in the center of the country and had to travel some 320 km to the processing plant and terminal. The first train is committed to the Korean market. A second train is expected to be brought on line in a few months, to raise total production to some 6.7 million tons per year. While the market for this second stream was originally expected to be in the US, at present they are keeping it closer to home by intending to sell to India.

The USA had been seen as a sure market for LNG at the time that Belhaf was planned but that was before shale gas began to hit the scene. Now, the declining price in the American market, and the prevailing large quantities in storage, make that less desirable.

Moving around the coast to Qatar, business is good with three LNG vessels shuttling to the UK this month. With three LNG terminals – at Dragon, South Hook and Isle of Grain, the UK can now import up to 25% of its needs as LNG. That is helping to keep the price of natural gas lower in Western Europe and has a natural knock on to prices that those countries want to pay to such companies as Gazprom.


Qatar is simultaneously setting up to be a major supplier to China. The Chinese see that market being in the range of 40 to 60 million tons by 2020. They have just started taking delivery of an initial 2 million tons per year from Qatar.

Back in early 2006 when the expansion of LNG trains was planned for Qatar it was expected that the US would be buying up to 30% of its needs from Qatar and Qatargas Trains 3 and 4 each with a capacity of 7.8 million tons, were started on that assumption. Now, of course, with the increased domestic production from the shales there is no longer such a need and the question becomes one of working out where the new surplus of natural gas will go.

Part of this may go to Europe to replace the Turkmen gas that may not make its way West this year, since Turkmenistan and Russia (not to mention Russia and Ukraine) still seem to be at odds over the price and profit that they each might make from supplying gas West. Turkmenistan can now hold on, given that it is selling its natural gas to China, in almost the same quantities, but for a much better price. Russia is, however, starting to get natural gas from the new Achimov deposit. The declining market, due to the recession, has seen Gazprom sales fall, but they are now claiming some turn around in that situation. incidentally, those who wish to get some idea of why it might be hard to gain a good idea on Turkmen reserves and production should read Shaun Walkers story in The Independent.

Not that China is content to just rely on the new feed from Turkmenistan. It is also starting to import LNG from Malaysia through a new terminal at Shanghai, and will purchase the LNG from Qatar train 2. A third Chinese LNG terminal also began operation earlier this year.

Now that is all the good news about supply. The questions that remain relate to the production that can be anticipated from the gas shales in the United States. The problems of maintaining production from gas fields that can drop production by over 20% in a month, or 80% in a year are not yet recognized. One significant one, that Arthur Berman raised as a concern, is the ability of wells to attract enough investors to pay for sinking them. If the recovery rate from the wells requires a high price and sustained volume to attract those investors, then the availability of cheaper LNG from the Middle East may keep the price from reaching the levels that are needed. Another LNG terminal has just been approved for Port Dolphin in Florida, while there is growing support for a facility at Coos Bay in Oregon. But that is, in the short term, seeming to bring in natural gas into a country that already has enough. The EIA notes that the current price of natural gas (Henry Hub) is around $4.289/kcf - the threat of imports from abroad will likely keep it down at around that level this winter. The question then comes as to whether, at that price there is enough profit in the gas wells to continue drilling in the gas shales.

I suspect that the hype, for a short time, will keep that program running, but if you’re losing money on production you can’t make it up on volume. The rig count is slowly rising, but whether the resulting production will make money, and how long will the wells last are topics for another day. Though cold weather, short term, might help in reducing what continue to be record stocks of natural gas.