Carbon Sequestration
My response to a blog on The Wilderness Society’s site.
The author wrote, “powerful interest are also lobbying Congress to open up more wild lands to drilling and to develop oil shale in the Rockies. Wringing oil from shale is a dirty and harmful process that scars the land.” She went on with familiar terminology, “the cost of inaction is just too great” and “we need to take bold, decisive action on global warming” but does not elaborate.
In our carbon constrained world, wringing (her word) oil from shale utilizes a process called Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), a common approach for secondary and tertiary recovery of oil in mature wells. Injecting CO2 or nitrogen under high pressure is the most commonly used approach to displace oil to the surface and thus provides the infrastructure for CO2 storage: Co2 injection and sequestration in saline formations below oil reservoirs.
With urgent need for CO2 emission reduction, utilizing historic technology for carbon sequestration is the only value added technology at this time. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said, “To prevent the worst effects of climate change, we must accelerate our efforts to capture and store carbon in a safe and cost-effective way.”
More on carbon sequestration later.
If you want to be a good steward of our lands and learn about the oil and gas industry, take a tour of a well site. How you might ask? Well, the BLM, Rock Springs (not so lovingly called “The Rock” by field hands), is hosting a public tour of the proposed “North Dutch John No. 1 well” in Wild Horse Basin, south of Rock Springs, Wyoming. This site is in crucial elk and mule deer winter range and comments will be a accepted through August 26. Drilling will commence late November after archery and rifle hunting seasons. Afterwards head south to the magnificent Royal Gorge Reservoir National Recreational Area for some fishing.
I worked on a 10, 000 ft gas well as a mudlogger west of Gillette, Wyoming during a summer break after returning to college. It’s fascinating work. The open range feeds your soul, isolating yet holding you in its awe inspiring magnificence. One evening, after looking at dried well cuttings under the microscope, the wind suddenly picked up and the sky turned an awful yellowish green. I was eating a BLT in our tiny logging trailer, waiting for the midnight tower, my shift. I was pretty sure the trailer was going to roll with the tumble weeds so I crammed myself under the table, waiting out a twister that found our camp in the middle of this forsaken territory. As soon as it was safe, I ran to the doghouse for companionship and a cigarette. The doghouse is next to the derrick on the drilling floor where roughnecks spend their nights throwing chains to hook up or pull drilling pipe.
They kidded me a lot, but I did the same back with lots of f…this and f…that seasoning our conversation. Roughnecks are amazing people who work one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, and I’m happy to call those men my friends.
Denise
Happy Birthday Kelly