Reduce Greenhouse Gases – An Environmentally Friendly Alternative Process For Hydraulic Fracturing Using Natural Gas

Millennium Stimulation Services has developed a process that allows hydraulic fracturing to both reduce greenhouse gases and provide a completely waterless solution. Using natural gas as a fracturing fluid provides an environmentally friendly solution, as well as an economically sound alternative for producers.

Calgary, AB (PRWEB) - The Initiative to Reduce Greenhouse Gases (GHG)

Millennium Stimulation Services has set forth an initiative to reduce greenhouse gases through environmentally friendly alternatives to the conventional hydraulic fracturing methods. Using Energized Natural Gas (ENG) allows Millennium to not only provides the option to go both waterless and reduced emissions, it also offers economic benefits to the client deploying the technology.

There is a growing demand to reduce greenhouse gases in general with stronger efforts to push further restrictions on the oil and gas industry. Millennium is currently undergoing project development to build both equipment and production plant. It is the end goal for Millennium to bring LNG to the market with the capacity to use everything it produces to deploy a rapid replacement strategy. The end goal being to replace the conventional fracturing fluids using LNG throughout North America.

Reducing Greenhouse Gases by the Tonne

To help understand, the majority of greenhouse gases are produced via the venting and flaring process. This occurs upon recovery of the gas from the reservoir. Often times, the resource in the reservoir is mixed with the fluid used to produce a fracture. This creates a solution that is not suitable to meet sales gas specification. The higher concentrations of unusable fluids are closest to the well-bore. This allows the producer to flow these fluids to the surface first. These are then vented or flared until the reservoir is producing volumes that meet sales gas specification.

To Illustrate: No Venting or Flaring

The Average Vehicle 

• Drives roughly 11,300 miles (18,000 km)/year
• Consumes on average 21.4 Miles/Gallon (9 Liters/100km)
• Produces on average, 4.75 Tonnes of greenhouse gases/year

Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Presenting a Scenario 

• Using Roughly 5 thousand tonnes/day of LNG to replace traditional fluids
• Would reduce roughly 18,500 tonnes of GHG/day
• Is the equivalent of roughly 3,900 vehicles per day

Waterless Operations Means Significant Reduction in Associated Carbon Emitters

The cost of using water is often believed to be a fraction of what it may cost to use a gas to pump into a fracture. This is not true. While acquiring the water itself is fairly cost efficient, the associated costs are not. These costs are spread among the hauling of water, to treatment, to recycling and disposal.

The related greenhouse gas emissions that accompany these costs have everything to do with hauling the water from acquisition to deployment. The benefit of a waterless operation is in of itself an environmental benefit as well as an increase to production efficiency. This however will cover just the reduction of greenhouse gases associated.

To Illustrate: Waterless Operations

Hauling Water 

• 5 million liters per frack equates to roughly 170 trips @ 80km each
• Consumes on average 6 Miles/Gallon (39.2 Liters/100km)
• Produces on average, 12 Tonnes of greenhouse gases/frack

Hauling LNG

• 5 million liters of water = roughly 3.5 million liters of LNG volume
• 3.5 million liters per frack equates to roughly 60 trips @ 50km each
• Consumes on average 6 Miles/Gallon (39.2 Liters/100km)
• Produces on average, 3 Tonnes of greenhouse gases/frack

Positive Economic Impact

The government of Canada has been reducing greenhouse gases while keeping a constant economic growth to this point. From 2005 to 2012, Canadian GHG emissions have decreased by 5.1 per cent while the economy has grown by 10.6 per cent. While many other technologies and potential solutions are being presented regularly, many of them come at a high cost. This is not the case for ENG.

Environmentally Friendly

• No venting or flaring as mentioned above leads to massive reduction in greenhouse gases
• LNG can reduce or eliminate fresh water use
• Reduction in required transport equipment is an additional reduction to greenhouse gases
• The reduced cleanup as a result of using LNG reduces the overall operational carbon footprint

No Additional Infrastructure Required

• LNG requires no additional infrastructure or modifications to currently existing pipelines
• LNG Does not require disposal infrastructure
• LNG can be immediately recovered and pumped directly into the production line

Economically Beneficial to the Producers

• No lost product due to flaring means the producer benefits directly from that additional product
• LNG will improve reservoir efficiency leading to a higher production for the producer
• Pumping with LNG is more cost effective than pumping any other fluids

Canada’s LNG Infrastructure

Currently, most of our LNG projects under development are focused on the export of the product. While our resources are abundant, it is counter-intuitive in terms of achieving our goals. The problem here however is not the exporting; rather, it is the fact that we have yet to look within our borders for a means to capitalize on using LNG to benefit us here in Canada. Not only is the resource available to us, but we know it is a much cleaner by about 50% in relation to greenhouse gas emissions produced by using coal.

The Future of Energy and LNG 

• Global demand for energy is expected to increase 33 per cent by 2035
• Natural Gas growth and is expected to increase 48 per cent by 2035
• Canada’s resources can provide natural gas to consumers for the next 100-plus years

Source: Canada’s Natural Gas – CAPP