This EFL Seminar is free to attend but registration in advance is required. Click here to register.
This seminar has been organised in collaboration with American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) and The European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers (EAGE) Imperial College student chapters.
Abstract
Production from the Marcellus gas shale generated international interest when methane accumulated in the surface housing of a water well pump and exploded. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA-DEP) immediately investigated and determined the cement had insufficiently isolated shallow methane-bearing sands (not the Marcellus gas shale) and methane from these sands was leaking into ground water.
The media immediately seized upon the story and painted a picture of an industry unable to manage risk. The reputation of gas shale was further darkened by a Hollywood polemic called, Gasland, a documentary based loosely on facts. Later there were two highly publicized blowouts from Marcellus wells and some surface spills that added strength to those who argued against industry. The biggest public fear was the frack fluid could, somehow, flow uphill more than 2000 meters to contaminate groundwater. Of course, there are a number of physical laws such as the law of gravity and the law of buoyancy that prevent this from happening.
Since the initial hype by the media, studies by both the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and PA-DEP have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that no frack fluids have contaminated groundwater in the vicinity of the methane leaking from casing. Microseismic surveys have since shown that fracture stimulations travel laterally as much 300 m but are generally restricted in vertical growth to 100 m.
The focus of the fracking debate has since shifted to overlap with the climate debate. The debate was further sharpened by academic studies claiming such a high rate of methane leakage during completion that the effect on global warming would be substantial even though burning methane releases about half the CO2 relative to that released by coal on a BTU basis.
Biography
Terry Engelder, a leading authority on the recent Marcellus gas shale play, holds degrees from Penn State B.S. (’68), Yale M.S. (’72) and Texas A&M, Ph.D. (’73).
He is currently a Professor of Geosciences at Penn State and has previously served on the staffs of the US Geological Survey, Texaco, and Columbia University. Short-term academic appointments include those of Visiting Professor at Graz University in Austria and Visiting Professor at the University of Perugia in Italy. Other academic distinctions include a Fulbright Senior Fellowship in Australia, Penn State’s Wilson Distinguished Teaching Award, membership in a US earth science delegation to visit the Soviet Union immediately following
Nixon-Brezhnev détente, and the singular honor of helping Walter Alvarez collect the samples that led to the famous theory for dinosaur extinction by large meteorite impact.
He has written over 160 research papers, many focused on Appalachia, and a book, the research monograph Stress Regimes in the Lithosphere. His research focus for the past 35 years has been the interaction between earth stress and rock fracture.
His work on gas shales first caught industry attention in the late 1970s and industry has engaged him ever since in learning how to recover gas from black shale. In the international arena, he has worked on exploration and production problems with companies including Saudi Aramco, Royal Dutch Shell, Total, Agip, and Petrobras.
In 2011 he was named to the Foreign Policy Magazine’s list of Top 100 Global Thinkers for drawing international attention to the value of gas shale as an energy source.