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  4. What Is a Geologist to Do (2)?

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- Let's look at.. going back to we talked earlier about shale. Let's look at completing horizontals. Let's say that you decide to go in and buy some uncompleted horizontals. You got a great deal. And you've got like a hundred that you need to re-complete. Why did I buy a hundred? Well, because it sounded like a good deal. Now you've got to actually do it. So, we have to look at geological versus geometrical horizontals. The idea was, earlier, that you just do, like if you're gonna do 30 stages, you just equally divide them out. Now, it's different. You look at, the geology helps pick where exactly to frack, and do the stages, and they're based on sweet spots. So, it's like optimizing, by doing that, you may be able to reduce your costs quite a bit. Also, selecting proppants, the right kind of proppants. Also, developing a reservoir model using logs, geology, geochemistry. Integrate all of your information to develop a good model. So here's another question: Ok, and here's information. What is the information I need to revitalize? Let's look at workflows. What I'd like to emphasize right now is very important to look at teams and not try to work alone. So if somebody hires you to be a consulting geologist, then you might ask, "Ok, are you going to hire an engineer, too?" Usually the answer is, "Oh yeah, "we already have an engineer." Generally speaking, you're not really going to talk to the engineer except to let the engineer tell you what they're already deciding to do. The key is to actually talk and make decisions together and share information. And also, to look at other third party services that you can. For example, cores. Cores are very useful if you can. And then, also, let's look at solutions at a shoestring budget. They way to get to that is to start out and if can could have an "if we could have it all" kind of workflow budget. And then, slowly, bringing down to that. And then, implementation. So you just have different issues. A few things to keep in mind, there are new realities. And that has to do with water disposal. How many of you are familiar with some of the issues having to do with induced seismicity? Ok, right now, in Oklahoma, the Oklahoma geological survey has produced a number of reports demonstrating how a lot of the new earthquakes that have come up in Oklahoma that are happening frequently, are really due to injecting water, produced water, into the Arbuckle. The Arbuckle seems like the ideal place to dispose of water because it almost seems like it's under vacuum. It just drinks it up. What they're finding, though, now is that, the Arbuckle is around a lot of deep seated faults, and, I don't know how many of you are familiar with the action of siphoning gasoline from a tank, or whatever, but what they're finding is that some of the faults are acting as siphons. So they just like are pulling the water up into the fracture. Not only just into the fault, into the fractures. So, it's causing all kinds of geometrical volumetrical issues, not to mention, pressure, and not to mention, lubricating faults. Not surprisingly, we're seeing a lot of earthquakes. Well, one of the solutions that was proposed by Mark Zoback's team at the University of Stanford was to go in and re-inject 116 00:03:50,000 --> 00:03:51,800 in the same formation. Well, that's a great idea in a case of, say, the Mississippian. And it's a great idea in the case of Huntan, where you've got due watering. You're basically, again, just producing oil-stained water and separating it all out. But what do you do if it's a shale play and it's producing a lot of water? Can you just like re-inject it back in? I mean, chances are, it's not going to take it. Although, it would be nice, but it won't. And if it does take it, it's going to cause all kinds of issues. Even though is it produced from the same formation. So, there are some major issues in the horizon, and if you can be part of the solution for coming up with new solutions for disposing of water, that would be really great. I tried to be part of a solution of cleaning it up and using it for drinking water. That solution is rejected by everybody I talked to. And even the APG, we tried to have it, we had a workshop on solving water dilemmas and a lot of it had to do with, like, cleaning it up or, at least, reusing whatever. Or, even using it for agricultural uses, as they're doing in California. And, a lot of the problem is just public perception and resistance. Just the idea, "Oh, I'm not drinking "what was once in the ground." Or, in an oil reservoir. How many of you would do that? If you said, "Ok, on your bottle of Ozarkas, "suddenly said, 'Produced from the EagleFord'," how many of you would drink it? Brave. 167 00:05:23,533 --> 00:05:26,466 Chances are, a lot won't. In a lot of the parts of the world where that does happen, people have no choice, so, they don't really know what they're drinking. Or just using it for, basically, gray water uses, etc. is fine. Unless it's, of course, radioactive, and it's not so great, but, oh well. 178 00:05:44,600 --> 00:05:46,566 Ok, so, anyway, here are some references for some of the things I mentioned, current events I mentioned at the beginning. And, that's the end of this part of the presentation, but I have a few resources I'll share with you afterwards.