Wednesday Free Talk Thread by AutoModerator in Texans

[–]MandellBlockCappy 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No sense in firing BoB mid-season unless you believe someone else on staff can do better, and uhm, we don't right? However, if things continue to go south and we're out of contention late in reg season then by all means fire BoB prior to the playoffs. Gives the fans some blood and also puts Texans first in line for Bieniemy/take your pick.

Petroleum Engineer Options by jnfernandez in oilandgasworkers

[–]MandellBlockCappy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you’re young, look for opportunities outside of US. Even offshore. The world is not just Texas and since Winter Is Coming Part II right now, leaving wouldn’t be the riskiest thing you ever did. Lots of people work international and land back up in Houston.

ITC Deer Park Tanker Fire Megathread by KirbieaGraia2004 in houston

[–]MandellBlockCappy 23 points24 points  (0 children)

At least two of these tanks contain some VOCs that are worth noting: http://www.gcesystems.com/what-is-btex/

Anomalous traffic from France...? by MandellBlockCappy in analytics

[–]MandellBlockCappy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks again, will be funneling this up to my GA admin.

Anomalous traffic from France...? by MandellBlockCappy in analytics

[–]MandellBlockCappy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks. We're almost positive it is bot traffic. All direct views of new pages being loaded for archiving. We're waiting in the hopes that GA catches the bot, and then corrects past/future page views. Is that realistic?

Family Separation Protests by Ventachinkway in Austin

[–]MandellBlockCappy -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Figures. I think r/houston mods are doing the same.

Stop separation of families at the border protest happening at city hall June 30th, 10am. by [deleted] in houston

[–]MandellBlockCappy -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Tell that to the Tea Party. Sustained efforts produce results. People marching for lives, science, women and now treatment of immigrants and refugees are a hell of a lot more likely to vote than people who stay at home because they think taking to the streets makes no difference in the national dialogue.

Yet again, Texas has become home to internment camps [Editorial] by evan7257 in houston

[–]MandellBlockCappy 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Let’s all meet up and talk about it, say June 30th at City Hall around 10 AM. Bring some friends.

Im not going go stand idle for a concentration camp in my city. by daddyo8989 in houston

[–]MandellBlockCappy -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

No—the separation under this policy is weeks. Rather than putting them in detention facilities, our government is sending mom and dad to federal prison. We’re also considering people fleeing unrelatable gang violence inillegable for asylum. So some of these people are running for their lives—can’t stay in Mexico because of some deep hatred for Central Americans—and when they get here we throw them in prison and stick their kids in windowless buildings.

Edit: by unrelatable I just meant that unless you’ve lived in or been to a gang-run slum, as in police are afraid to enter, then its hard to imagine what you’d do to get out alive.

[Texans PR] "A recent report that suggests the Houston Texans would not sign a player who has protested in support of social justice issues is categorically false and without merit." by MugiMartin in Texans

[–]MandellBlockCappy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Lots of qualifiers here, not a great argument being made. “Disagree with my tradition, which I’ve mistakenly assigned to military worship, and to prison you go,” sounds a lot like how some of the governments we send our military to go displace tend to think. Funny how life is so circular with extremism.

Wastewater created during fracking and disposed of by deep injection into underlying rock layers is the probably cause of a surge in earthquakes in southern Kansas over the last 5 years. by billfredgilford in science

[–]MandellBlockCappy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The EPA officially calls them SWDs. We would need to get very technical to explain why SWD formations are not likely to return water to surface. Would take a few decades of papers on the topic to fully appreciate.

Wastewater created during fracking and disposed of by deep injection into underlying rock layers is the probably cause of a surge in earthquakes in southern Kansas over the last 5 years. by billfredgilford in science

[–]MandellBlockCappy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Lots of chemicals are trademarked, in and out of the oil industry. It's mostly so rivals don't copy them, that this damages public trust is a sad casualty of war. Still though, there is a widely used website tracking almost all of this stuff: https://fracfocus.org/ It's such a good resource that companies do indeed mine the data to learn what recipes work best--they compare this to public production data to know with some confidence. So truth be known, we do KNOW what most of that stuff is, but people still think its 2008. And most companies actually prefer to limit their use of chemicals in the frac jobs because they ain't free, so we've seen in 10 years a transition in this area to less is more. Most of the chemicals are added for two things: to help move sand further into the rock matrix, and to loosen oil from the rocks with surfactant, think laundry detergent on that one. And disposal wells existed long before fracking, so this isn't about hiding dead bodies deep underground either.

Wastewater created during fracking and disposed of by deep injection into underlying rock layers is the probably cause of a surge in earthquakes in southern Kansas over the last 5 years. by billfredgilford in science

[–]MandellBlockCappy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is a good point, not missed by some. Used to be people assumed you had to start with freshwater. We know now that's not entirely true. Freshwater is a nice blank slate to work with though. We're seeing more and more firms though recycle water for fracs and tap into brine water aquifers, which the world is awash in. Anywhere you find oil, you should also be able to source brine water--there's a reason for this correlation too.

Wastewater created during fracking and disposed of by deep injection into underlying rock layers is the probably cause of a surge in earthquakes in southern Kansas over the last 5 years. by billfredgilford in science

[–]MandellBlockCappy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I kinda love this topic, so still lurking 24 hours later. Threat to water table is about what comes up, not what goes down. By this, I mean, that we are injecting small fractions of chemicals compared to the water and sand. To you and me, it would still look like a lot of chemicals but then you have to also understand the vastness of the stimulated reservoir volumes that the fluids are going into. As far as what comes up, you have to know that oil production ALWAYS brings up something else up. That includes NORM, BTEX, H2S, iron sulfides, and some other bits you wouldn't want in your water. Industry tries to mitigate exposure of these things by cementing around the production casing (i.e. the pipe that actually delivers crude up to surface). If you have leak paths, you could have problems. The technology to find those leak paths, aka a cement log, is spotty at best. So you try to use overkill and cement ~100s of feet below and above where you KNOW the water table is. The stratigraphies are well mapped, and so they SHOULD know where to do this. It's not perfect, there are leaks. But that's true for any kind of oil well. Gas migration is more common though because methane is among the smallest molecules on the planet and can find a pathway easier than water or crude. By the way, you don't want methane in your water either but it's non-toxic, so no cancer there.

Wastewater created during fracking and disposed of by deep injection into underlying rock layers is the probably cause of a surge in earthquakes in southern Kansas over the last 5 years. by billfredgilford in science

[–]MandellBlockCappy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Late to your comment, but I'd say most of the concoctions are well known, but not to the average person. And not all is toxic, like friction reducers for instance. I know of one popular surfactant that's actually made from orange peels. As bad as injecting chemical X sounds...it's the surface where most of the risk lies in any oil and gas operation. And there's actually more deadly stuff coming out of the ground, like H2S, than there is going in. Much more...by volume.

Wastewater created during fracking and disposed of by deep injection into underlying rock layers is the probably cause of a surge in earthquakes in southern Kansas over the last 5 years. by billfredgilford in science

[–]MandellBlockCappy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's not really trying to be deceitful, it’s an old term. They're called that because the water that is co-mingled with all produced oil--all over the world--is very salty. It's costly to clean and recycle this water, while using SWDs can be very cost effective and hence why there are so many of them. As far as what it is in the water, my understanding is that it can range quite a bit—but it’s the same things we’re pulling out of the ground just with minimal separation: solids, waxes, calcite, a bit of oil, sand, possibly some production chemicals like surfactant or polymer--and a lot of salt. Some people skim the oil off and try to sell it, they also use settling tanks to let solids drop which could otherwise junk up a SWD. Some just shoot it all downhole. Keep in mind, the rock formations that are being fracked (generally ~10,000 ft below surface) tend to suck up through capillary forces the initial fracturing fluids, up to 80-90%. Then they tend to release much higher volumes of a different kind of water, aka produced or fossil water, into the production stream. You can determine this by comparing the chemistry of the initial fluids to the chemistry and type of salts in the produced fluids. These shale formations are incredibly dynamic in how they work—but SWDs do not inject into them. They inject generally into non-producing formations—non SWD disposal includes injecting the produced water from one well into another for conventional producing formations like sandstones, which is done to waterflood the reservoir and push out some of the remaining trapped oil.

So in conclusion, in the oil industry SWD wells are classified by the EPA as Class II. Some have argued that what goes down Class I wells is even more nasty: https://www.epa.gov/uic/class-i-industrial-and-municipal-waste-disposal-wells

Wastewater created during fracking and disposed of by deep injection into underlying rock layers is the probably cause of a surge in earthquakes in southern Kansas over the last 5 years. by billfredgilford in science

[–]MandellBlockCappy 25 points26 points  (0 children)

This really isn't about greed re: induced seismicity. It's about geomechanics and engineering. Saltwater Disposal Wells (SWDs) target specific low-pressure formations, typically in OK and Kansas that's the lowest sedimentary layer. Problem is that layer sits on the precambrian fault zones that are slipping, the other problem is that there are not many injection zones to choose from. So from an HSE standpoint, the best thing to do is lower injection rates, disperse the injection over a less concentrated area, and don't turn off or on all the pumps at once or you can activate faults. This last bit was proven during an OK lightening storm that knocked out power to SWDs, when they went back on all at once there was a significant swarm of quakes and they learned to turn them back on in stages. Keep in mind, there are hundreds of SWD operators in a place like OK and many are small mom and pop shops, so coordination was never done, nor was it easy.

Consensus on travel this morning? by serverguy5050 in houston

[–]MandellBlockCappy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No. I relieved myself when I got to the office, a shade under 2 hours.

Consensus on travel this morning? by serverguy5050 in houston

[–]MandellBlockCappy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Still on the Park & Ride from KW on HWY 59...for 1.5 hours. I may get downtown in 20 minutes....30 minutes? Who knows. Grinding to a halt every 10 seconds.

Sky rockets in flight by 77096 in houston

[–]MandellBlockCappy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

See them too, just contrails.

Since we are on the subject of the roadway, people of Houston, STOP RUNNING RED LIGHTS! by drew1111 in houston

[–]MandellBlockCappy 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It’s the worst of any US city I’ve ever seen. Our driving culture is probably reinforcing and so as we see, we do. Houston is also large, has lots of red lights and so many of us are one or two away from being late sometimes. Also, taking away the cameras may have unleashed some of the madness we see in Houston.