SUPLEMENTO ESPECIAL
MAYO 2017 I WWW.GLOBALENERGY.MX
CMP 2017
59
FRACKING MADE THE US THE ‘NEW SAUDI ARABIA’
NEW TECHNIQUES OF INTERVENTION, KEYS TO SUSTAINED PRODUCTION BOTH FRACKING AND ELECTRO CENTRIFUGAL PUMPING REPRESENT THE TWO BEST WAYS, THE MOST EFFICIENT AND MODERN, TO INCREASE OIL PRODUCTION: THIS IS A PRIORITY TO PEMEX.
1.9 Foto: Bigstock
- -BY EDUARDO MEDINA
T
he oil industry has decades struggling with the issue of modernizing its techniques of extraction. Because of that, in recent years, and after the technological boom of the 21st century, production ways have been changing. Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), as Mexico’s national oil company, and the biggest corporation of the country, shares this challenge. Pemex, also, is one of the few oil industries in the world that develops all the value chain, from exploration, production, refinement and sales to final users, its participation and modernization is crucial; even more, when many oilfields under its care are in descent. In fact, the development of new production ways, and the adoption of the best administrational, financial practices, has been a corner stone of the Energy Reform. In
million million Barrels per day, Pemex’s goal
the same measure that oilfields with natural flow go extinct, new techniques of extraction are developed. One of these new techniques is fracking: a way to release non-conventional hydro carbons located 3000 meters below the surface, in between rocks with very low permeability. This technique consists in an horizontal extraction that injects pressured water, mixed with sand and other chemicals, in order to fracture the rock, and so, allow the fluids to go out the cracks and up the surface. These non-conventional hydro carbons are, precisely, the ones who don’t flow in a natural way from their nat-
ural geological deposit. And because of that, companies need a specific technique to extract them. Even though they have numerous forms, the most famous are shale gas, and shale oil. Non-conventional hydro carbons boom came with the exponential growth of the United States with this practice. Mitchell Energy was the first oil company in using fracking: as they exploited natural gas from the Texan subsoil. Today, the Texan basin is considered the new Saudi Arabia, and experts estimate that this region could produce between 8 and 10 million oil barrels per day. Although is true that Mexico has not yet been able to take advantage of these type o resources, Pemex’s second bid is specially concentrated in these deposits. Experts such as Thomas Heather, practice advisor of Haynes and Boone, think that this event could be historic. Never the less, fracking has been used in Mexico since 2003; although, not by Pemex, but by international oil firms. This is actually the importance of the bid. In geological deposits such as Burgos, Tampico Misantla, and Tercera de Veracruz, fracking is being used today. Another new technique in oil intervention, that has already left important revenues to Mexico’s national oil company, is the electro centrifugal pumping. This is an artificial production technique used to energize the oil well’s flow, and with that, make it capable of producing Foto:volumes e-Media of fluid, at the same time that it keeps the large operational conditions intact. Its fundamental principle is that to elevate the fluid from the bottom of the deposit, to the surface, through the centrifugal rotation of a submersible pump, which power is supplied by an electric motor in the bottom of the well.
Mitchell Energy had the first experience with fracking This technique was implemented by Pemex in Sonda de Campeche´s deposits, with very positive results. It was 2011 when Pemex presented to 28 companies the project called BEC, which had the goal to apply the electro centrifugal pumping to Ek, Balam, Takin, y Ku Maloob Zaap (KMZ) deposits, in order to maximize their production. KMZ, since then, has been the number one oil producer in México (the second is Cantarell) with a production of 800,000 oil barrels per day, and this, precisely, because of the electro centrifugal technique. In fact, in December of 2011, KMZ reached the record number of 860,000 barrels per day, and 324,000 cubical feet of gas; then, one year later, was the receptacle of an investment of $42,405 million pesos, applicable to the injection of nearly 650 million of cubical feet of nitrogen, in order to guarantee its production flow. With the use of these technologies, oil companies all over the world are now capable of ensuring their production, and surpass, maybe, the million barrels per day mark.