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Comment by sulam | Hacker News Reader

Keep in mind that this is oil which needs to be horizontally drilled for, meaning fracking. Fracking has destroyed water tables because of the chemicals used and been linked to earthquakes in Canada. Not to mention that it is very intensive in terms of water use.

But of course, while the oil is running there are lots of jobs created, at least until OPEC decides they've had enough and drives the price of oil back down.

Since this is Texas, I'm pretty sure the local community won't worry about this stuff much (I grew up in Texas and have relatives who live just north of this field's extent). Hopefully the benefits will outweigh the costs for them -- it's not clear that this has been the case for North Dakota.

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Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing are two different processes. Horizontal drilling is just that, drilling in a horizontal direction. Fracking is injecting a liquid to break up and dissolve a rock formation to access the crude.

Technically, but getting oil from shale involves both right?

So yes, but the point is somewhat mute since both would indubitably be used in this case.

Yes and no. They're not mutually exclusive, but you can use one without the other and they are often used in conjunction. It just depends on what the engineers decide is the most practical way to extract the oil. I realize it may sound petty, but I wanted people to know that they are two completely different processes. It's a lot like hearing someone confuse JavaScript with Java. Easy and understandable mistake but two very different animals.

More like confusing React and Redux. Horizontal drilling (React) without fracking (Redux) is pretty common, but it's pretty rare to frack without horizontal drilling.

First we brought JavaScript to the back-end, now we're bringing JavaScript to shale gas extraction.

Indeed - I'd say this is close enough for the lay person. I've been on many vertical wells that were fractured (out side of the US), but that is mostly irrelevant to what is being discussed. It is certainly true that shale gas was only cost effective due to horizontal drilling + fracking.

Fracking doesn't dissolve rock. It fractures the rock so that pore spaces are connected and the oil or gas can freely flow out.

You're right, I was misinformed. Acidizing is what dissolves rock.

Given the water situation in most of Texas, I find it unbelievable that anyone is still pushing oil, especially shale oil, as an energy option anywhere in Texas. And, yet, all those old oil barons are still pushing that agenda, and still controlling the narrative at every level of government.

That same desert could house miles of solar panels and miles of wind farms. But, very few people are pushing that solution to the energy problem, even though it is now price-competitive with fossil fuels to do so in places like Texas, where both wind and sun are plentiful almost year round.

Unless I vastly underestimate how much land oil extraction uses, that land could still house miles of solar panels and miles of wind farms.

You might be vastly underestimating how much land oil extraction uses. It depends on how they'll be extracting this shale oil from this particular shale oil field, which I don't know. In some cases, it is massively land intensive; it is akin to strip mining in that vast tracts of land are dug up. In other cases, it is just massively water intensive, as they pump a water and chemical blend at high temperature underground and then pump it back out to pull the shale slurry out with it.

Shale oil is a very different process than traditional oil wells, and much riskier to water reservoir resources in the region.

I've never seen a finished well take much land at all. For most 600 acre sections of land, even multiple wells on that land would take up an acre or two at most. Fracking itself takes more space just to bring in the equipment and water tanks. But after it is fracked, at most there is a "christmas tree" and a few water tanks.

As for the extra space for fracking, most states require returning the land back to how it was before after the few month process of fracking is done.

The "a few water tanks" is the bit that adds up - open air surface storage pools are far more commonly used than tanks, and as the aim is to get the used fluid to evaporate, rather than trucking it away, you optimise for maximal surface area. I know that's not the intended course of action, but it's a common resource extraction strategy - disposing of waste properly is an expense that can be avoided by making your waste magically disappear.

Thing is, in many places it rains, and the waste water doesn't evaporate, it just remains until a government body cleans it up or the pool membrane ruptures and it enters the water table - many smaller operators wind up after extraction, and leave their tailings for the EPA to deal with, and reincorporate and move on to the next parcel. Again, not just fracking - applies to a lot of stuff where waste is produced.

So, while in a perfect world fracking uses little land, in reality, it uses rather a bit - and is being heavily state subsidised both directly and indirectly.

All of that said, a silver lining might be that wellhead sites end up too polluted to be used for anything but solar farms.

> many smaller operators wind up after extraction, and leave their tailings for the EPA to deal with, and reincorporate and move on to the next parcel. Again, not just fracking - applies to a lot of stuff where waste is produced.

There is an easy way to protect from after-effects: the government must mandate that a specific percentage of revenue be set aside in a trust or other impartial entity (government itself doesn't count, because government funds are always open to be tapped for other purposes). This money is at the end either used by the government to fund restoration if the operator goes belly-up, or refunded to the operator.

There is actually quite a fair number of windmills in this area. Wind energy has been in the basin for decades if you were to drive through the area you will actually see more windmills than pumpjacks in some parts. Solar is starting to catch up, but neither of these could compete with the profits offered by petroleum when oil was over $100/barrel.

Oil doesn't have the same use cases as electricity. Until we have electric planes, ships, heavy trucks, farm equipment and freight trains, there is still a big place for oil in transportation.

Also, until we get some good energy storage solutions, we are just going to run into the same problems of too much electricity during the middle of the day and not enough in the evening.

Wind is generally stronger at night. The issue with wind is intermittency.

Wind is usually stronger during daylight.

I expect that to be dependent on location. Near coasts, for example, the physics driving sea and land breezes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind#Sea_and_land_breezes) will either increase or decrease wind speed depending on local prevailing winds.

It also can depend a lot on height (very important for wind turbines)

Likewise solar. Solar contains a predictable component with a stochastic component (clouds) overlaid.

Solar thermal can mostly solve the problem.

With cheap enough electricity you can make artificial hydrocarbons.

The process is not as efficient as batteries (or just burning oil products found in the ground), but you get similar energy densities as the normal hydrocarbons. After all, the chemistry is the same.

I just wish we had functioning carbon tax or carbon emission markets. Then the government could just set the price or volume, and the market could figure out the most cost-efficient energy mix to hit the target.

What do you mean about the water situation in Texas? West Texas is not in drought: http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Home/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?...

The problem with solar is that solar does not provide on-demand electricity. Solar and batteries can, but that is much more expensive than using oil.

You have to use water to clean solar panels off, so putting them in the desert means they would get dirty and dirty panels aren't very efficient.

Are you aware of how much water fracking requires?

> earthquakes in Canada

and Oklahoma, and probably more...

Those are from the waste water injection wells, not the fracking itself.

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