E&P Notes (December 2015)
Authors: Jacobs Trent , Rassenfoss Stephen 
Published: November 2016

E&P Notes
Study Finds Surface Spills a Higher Risk to Groundwater Than Fracturing
Trent Jacobs, JPT Senior Technology Writer
Researchers at Yale University who analyzed groundwater wells in the Marcellus Shale area have determined that hydraulic fracturing is highly unlikely to be a direct source of contamination.
The 3-year study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also found that well casing failures and produced water containment ponds did not impact the groundwater samples taken during the study. The researchers concluded that the samples that tested positive for some of the same organic chemical compounds used in drilling and completion operations, but not in dangerous concentrations, resulted from accidental spills on the surface.
Statistics Point to Water Injection as Cause of Earthquakes, But Understanding Why Remains a Geological Puzzle
Stephen Rassenfoss, JPT Emerging Technology Senior Editor
A surge in earthquakes tightly clustered in southern Kansas that followed the large increase in produced water injections prompted the state to cut the daily limits on disposal wells in that area to see if that will help solve the problem.
Based on 3 months of reduced injections through mid-September, “the results were encouraging,” said Shelby Peterie, a research geophysicist at the Kansas Geological Survey. Her presentation at the Society of Exploration Geophysicists’ annual meeting in New Orleans in October showed there has been a reduction in the intensity of the earthquakes reported, but not the number of them.
From Air to Sea: Introducing Crew Resource Management to the Offshore Industry
Trent Jacobs, JPT Senior Technology Writer
Despite a number of recent and high-profile jetliner crashes, commercial aviation has entered into a new era of safety. Seven of the past 10 years have seen the fewest fatal accidents in the industry’s nearly 7-decade history and this year is on track to be the safest yet.
Aside from the significant improvements made in aircraft reliability, much of the progress has been attributed to the communication and operational training program known as crew resource management (CRM).
The basic principle of CRM is to encourage key personnel to speak up when they detect problems or notice mistakes while maintaining the hierarchy of authority.
Air Gun Inventor Creates A Lower Pressure Option
Stephen Rassenfoss, JPT Emerging Technology Senior Editor
More than 50 years after inventing the air gun, Stephen Chelminski is working on a new version of the industry standard designed to be more in tune with the current needs of the industry and its regulators.
While the components used would be familiar to anyone who has worked with an air gun, it has a fatter shape and produces sounds in a lower range. If it were a horn, it would be a tuba and a standard air gun would be a trumpet.
The goal is to reduce the energy emitted to produce the lower frequency range that is useful for seismic, while decreasing the emission of frequencies said to cause trouble for marine life. “Something like 3% to 6% of the energy from an air gun is turned into useful energy for seismic. The rest is wasted,” said Chelminski, chief executive officer of Chelminski Research, during an interview at the recent Society of Exploration Geophysicists’ (SEG) annual meeting in New Orleans.
Drilling Competition Offers Real-World Skills Challenge
Stephen Rassenfoss, JPT Emerging Technology Senior Editor
Vimlesh Bavadiya is leading a team of engineering students at the University of Oklahoma (OU) to repeat its victory in SPE’s Drillbotics competition next year.
The competition to build the best automated drilling machine was created to provide engineering students with a dose of real-world experience, where teamwork is required to attack a complex challenge when time and money are limited, the rules change, and in the end, things break.
“It was a very difficult path. But it was very good,” Bavadiya said, summing up the experience of the five-member team that won the first ever Drillbotics competition, which was created by the SPE Drilling Systems Automation Technical Section.