At The End Of The Earth: The Longest, Deepest Oil Wells In The World

Wow, this is competely amazing how far they can drill down and contol the direction of the drilling too, simply amazing!

While this is amazing, it's just more proof to the peak oil argument. Just the fact that we've moved from sticking a straw in the ground in Saudi Arabia to having to dig upwards of 12km deep and nearly as far sideways should scare energy consumers everywhere.

What has been produced there, or what do they hope to produce from this field?

This shouldn't scare anyone. . .Yes, we're going further and further into the ground to locate oil. We're also going into more and more trouble with frac'ing oil wells, including frac'ing in multiple stages and using more advanced/expensive propants (which are what help hold the fractures open without impeding the oil/gas flowing out of them).

We're also seeing bigger solar arrays than we've ever seen before. The wind farms are growing larger and more advanced, and we're even trying to harness the power within tidal fluctuations for our benefit. The world simply needs more energy with each new day that passes, so we'll go further to meet those demands. It doesn't mean that wells like those listed above are the norm or that they're our only hope of finding new oil.

We're currently drilling in places like the Fayetteville Shale in NE Arkansas and producing oil and gas (primarily gas, with some NGL's depending on exact location and well completion methods) that was beyond our reach technologically/economically just 10 years ago. Those wells typically go straight down for about a mile and then continue horizontally for about a mile, and they're being frac'ed in many, many different stages in order for the well to produce ideally. The frac'ing techniques are still being refined and we're getting better at it every day.

If you move on down to the Haynesville Shale in Louisiana, you'll see the same types of wells as in the Fayetteville as far as them being in a shale formation that we couldn't really produce a decade ago, horizontally drilled beyond some depth, having multiple frac stages, etc, and these wells are producing 25-30 times what their counterparts in the Fayetteville produce. They're obviously more profitable wells, so guess what? They drill a whole lot more of them in a much smaller area.

My point being is we're not going to run out of oil. We're just now at the point that we even NEED to start developing these more advanced techniques for oil/gas wells, and we'll continue to advance in the field. Keep in mind that mankind couldn't even find a need for oil not much more than a century ago, and how easy it was for people to produce all that oil that was, in some cases, literally just bubbling out of the ground. We've had 100+ years of progressively more and more difficult oil to obtain, and that peak oil doesn't mean the end of anything. It simply means that our species has most likely found a supplemental form of energy that allows oil production to be throttled back. There's nothing that can stop the momentum of our species' progress. If something gets in our way, mankind will simply go over, around, under, or through that obstacle, or we will simply find a different road to take to get us closer to our desired destination.

-Your friendly neighborhood Petroleum Engineer

Would it be interesting and great if some biologist found some kind of living bacterial life way down there mixed in the minerals or oil!

@ wylekyote. What about non-renewable source of energy is not clear to you? Advanced in our ability to drill for oil just means is shall be depleted faster, not to mention the damage drilling in areas like the north and really anywhere we drill. If people like you could trade your arrogance and stupidity for the will to do something to stop further damage, the world would be much better off.

@ me *Advances.

Friends,
Oil is being produced in molten Fumaroles deep in the Ocean Floor. Deep diving bathyspheres found petroleum products bubbling up out of fissures 20000 feet deep. Tremendous heat and pressure is actually converting the molten minerals into liquid crude oil. Then the newly formed oil under pressure seeps through cracks and fissures in the crust up into voids in the earth's crust we call oil fields. Texas fields that were pumped empty back in the 70's and capped have been reopened and found to contain oil. So the earth is renewing itself as we speak. Besides, we haven't even found half of the oil fields that exist.

@skycaptain, you make some interesting statements. I am interested in the source of your information. Can you suggest any good links, books, articles thank you. Of course finding a new source of oil, would that really solve our energy problems. Yes more energy, but it seems science has establish reliably we are polluting the planet with chemicals, CO2 and other oil products. Its simuliar to reading eat more fish oil its good for your heart. Then we read the fish have high metals and mercury in them. And then they say yes but the fish oil is good for you, keep eating it. I don't think more of our energy should come from oil products. We need to establish clean energy sources. Many of these clean energy sources also create more jobs locally to the USA too.

BubbaGump,

The discovery that there are huge populations of organisms about 15 miles below the Earth's surface, among which are organisms that make methane. It has been estimated that the mass of this biota equals that of all plant life on the surface of the planet. This biota could explain the biological signature found in oil.

A team of scientists at Carnegie, Indiana University South Bend and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory replicated the heat and pressure found 12 to 37 miles below the surface and discovered that methane formed from a mixture of iron oxide (FeO), calcite (CaCO3) and water over a wide range of temperatures.

When all this evidence is added up, it suggests that a new paradigm for the origins of oil and gas is in the making. This in turn suggests that oil and gas companies will change where they look for oil and gas, from sedimentary anticlines and basins to the Earth's spreading zones, the edges of tectonic plates and overthrust belts. It is to be noted that the world's known major oil and gas fields are already typically found in such locations. The Middle East is on a spreading zone that stretches from the Caucasus deep into Africa along the Rift Valley. Indonesian fields lie on the Pacific Ring of Fire.

These zones cover immense areas of the Earth's surface equal to the distance around the globe several times over. Many are deep under the oceans, but others are only just offshore or on land. The Himalayan Foothills, which geologically are similar to the Western Overthrust Belt and the Alberta Foothills, sources of huge gas finds in the past decade, extend for 15 degrees of latitude, a distance equal to that between the Rockies and Lake Superior. The entire West coast of North and South America could be in play. There could be several Middle Easts still to discover.

A detailed analysis with charts and graphics can be downloaded from:

http://www.facingthefutureinc.com/A%20Critique%20of%20Peak%20Oil.p

Also, here is a link to the original article:

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-06/end-earth-longest-deepest-oil-wells-world

BubbaGump,

Here is a link to an article that will explain the premise:

http://tinyurl.com/44up47b

great, another conspiracy theory for the ignorant masses to embrace...Abiotic Oil is far from proven and all the evidence suggests it either doesn't exist or is insignificant at best; if this were true the pennsylvania oil fields would still be producing; get real, there is NO WAY oil companies would spend billions to get at difficult oil when easy oil is in our back yard; there are easier ways to inflate the price of oil than spending more than you need to get at it; if Abiotic Oil was truly a significant source than how would the wells ever run dry? and since they do run dry, Abiotic Oil obviously does not come close to keeping up with demand; that is, of course, if it were real (probably not); a little common sense around here would be nice

Wouldn't it be odd or strange they drill so extremely deep one day in the future and find the earth to be hollow with another culture living below...

Wouldn't it be odd or strange if gump didn't make useless comments on every article?

I thought there were rules here?

@ hatandboots

The term "renewable" is thrown around so much that it's meaning has been watered down to almost nothing. Abiotic processes DO produce methane, it's proven and I've seen the results with my own eyes. Before you call me "arrogant", let me explain to you with all my "stupidity" how I have worked the last 5 years as an environmental specialist. I have gotten dirty in the process of cleaning up the mistakes of others many a time, and I have gotten to see the oil and gas industry from a rare perspective (at least for a petroleum engineer).

Now as to my claims of seeing methane production in the short term and as a result of human activity. . .I'll just base this off of the particular instance in which I got to observe this phenomenon firsthand, just so I can be absolutely sure of accuracy. In the mid- and late-1950's, the US gov't began funding a low income housing project on the outskirts of a local city. The land where they decided to build these new neighborhoods was uneven and covered in trees, so the contractors picked their easiest option to remedy that problem. . .they bulldozed the trees, piling them up in lower-lying areas in order to get a nice level area to build all of those small homes. Well fast forward about 50 years, and people in the area started having the natural gas service to their homes shut off. Why? Because random "spot checks" by the gas company for leaking methane revealed the presence of methane in high concentrations in seemingly random areas. In order to prevent a potential explosion (or more accurately, the gas company's liability in any explosion), they had shut off the gas to homes near the areas of high concentrations. I'll leave you to figure out the exact chemistry of it on your own, but the breakdown of organic material usually results in the production of Methane, or CH4 (this is also the reason cows fart so much, and possibly why you're so full of hot air, hatandboots). Basically the trees from 50 years ago were rotting, and in the absence of any type of cap over the "reservoir", it was just naturally leaking upwards due to its density. We used a 4' metal rod about 1/2" in diameter to poke holes into the soil and then inserted a "sniffer", a special machine that determines % composition of organic hydrocarbons like methane, and found levels above 99%. Hell, methane is explosive in air (not pure oxygen) in concentrations ranging from roughly 15% to 35-40%. The methane was actually in such high concentrations as to PREVENT itself from being a huge hazard. So there we have our methane, the most simplest of hydrocarbons, being formed by a natural and very common reaction in nature. Well where do the heavier hydrocarbons like ethane, bentane, butane, propane, etc, come from? Add heat, pressure, and time and you've got your answer. The additional energy that these higher-order hydrocarbons have in their bonds is from all of the energy added to the reservoir system by heat and pressure. Oil could technically be renewable, in the sense that we could foster the creation of our own, it would simply require more energy put into the process than we would ever get back out of the oil. . .so what's this complaining about oil being a non-renewable source of energy? What, do you want to lose money on the deal?

@Greg_NJ, I do find it odd when every some random spam comes across an article, nobody complains. That is truly odd.

@wylekyote, Is burning hydrocarbons of anykind bad for the enviroment and the earth, just curious? You being a engineer, do you believe the world scientist in the proposing of C02 is warming the world? Do you think polution is killing the oceans and coral reefs? What is your opinions of the effect of burning anykind of hydrocarbon on the enviroment, locally, nationally, worldly. What is your opinion, if not factual? The energy that is release from hydrocarbons is highly efficent, great even, but can the earth live with the ever increasing gases?

@Greg_NJ, I looked at your profile, all you do is make short one liner insults, negative comments. Now I understand you and what you about.

Lousy article... you neglected to say anything about abiotic oil which is the whole pillar Russian drilling is based upon.

@wylekyote...great insight, organic waste produces methane, guess you never lived on a farm, this is a naturally occurring process that is not an abiotic process, it is biotic decomposition...@tittiger, why would they mention something that probably doesn't exist?

@tittiger, you make a most excellent point.

It's interesting that this is an "extended reach" depth. Extended reach drilling is when the horizontal portion of the hole is equal to or longer than the vertical. So the depth of the well vertically is at max 3.5 miles, which would be where the producing formation is. Then the well turns to a horizontal depth to get more surface area for production.

I remember when shale gas was a pipe dream - now "rocket science" is making it possible to recover oil and gas that was once considered unrecoverable. This is where the Peak Oil argument falls flat (or just uninformed). Yes the easy oil is gone, but recent discoveries (shale plays and oil reservoirs in the US, GOM, Africa) and advanced oil field technology will definitely delay the peak. And the advancement of alternative sources of energy, by oil companies themselves, is a really exciting development, also. ConocoPhillips and Chevron are both hugh solar technology investors, researchers, developers.

Bubba, speaking of ever increasing gases....