horizontal drilling and fracking, page-5

I can very srtongly recommend that those that are seriously interested in their investment in Icon Energy take a look at that video, as those that have subsequently posted have found.

It not only shows us in very simple terms and description, how complex it is to put the drill in the right place to start with, but, then to locate the best spots for the fracking to take place.
It most importantly shows us that we should NOT take too much notice of the flow rate numbers that are released. They are NOT the be all and end all regarding the success or otherwise of a well.

As you will see from the video, the fracking can be "anything". It all depends where the fracking takes place, the size of the area, both vertically and horizontally, that is fracked, and from what zones the fracking is done and from where the gas is released.
There are literally hundreds of computations.

And THAT is why I rely on the words of management to tell us if THEY are happy with the results, NOT, the media commentators and journos.

You will also see the massive difference between a well that is drilled and fracked horizontally and one that is drilled vertically only.

It is common sense that the vertical well will produce much less gas than a horizontal well, even if it is in a fully gas saturated medium, especially from shale and tight sandstone which are far far less permeable than "conventional" coal seam wells.

There is only one hole to start with, then the fracking is done on the vertical surface of the drilled area and then fracked just in those vertical faces. Get the positioning of those fracks wrong and you will get a huge variation of flow rates, and, as they have said with our and Beach's other wells, they don't even know how many of those frack sites (14 in Halifax-1) have even been placed in the productive areas and how many of them are actually flowing!!

In fact, just to get free flowing gas from a vertical well is success in itself and " a pleasant surprise" as Santos put it when it happened in Moomba-191.

Compare that with the horizontal wells, where the drill is actually penetrating into and not just across the front of the productive seam.

And, that too, shows in the video, that all horizontal wells, or their flow rates, cannot really be compared, even from the very same medium.

It all depends on how far the horizontal drill penetrates, where it penetrates and even how many frack stages are done in each hole. One drill could penetrate 1000 ft horizontally and do 100 frack holes, whereas another, in exactly the same medium, could penetrate 2,000 ft and do 300 frack holes. You can see how the flow rates of these wells could be so substantially different.

When companies give us flow rates, they do not give us those details, so, it is literally impossible and extremely dangerous, to draw too many conclusions from them, especially investment decisions, on those numbers alone.

But, in Halifax-1 and most of 218, they have found 1000 metres of gas saturated shale and tight sandstone, both of which need technically accurate fracking to obtain optimum results. That 1000 metres provides the optimum opportunity for the optimum outcome from an extensive HORIZONTAL drilling programme.

So, that's why they have called these three wells "experimental".

Halifax-1 has found 1000 metres of gas saturated medium, with multiple zones of potential gas flow, which not only replicates that found by Beach in 218, but, was found to be even larger than their largest.
And now we are doing Hervey-1 (even bigger) and Keppel-1, to see if we have the same geology as in Halifax-1.

But, they, too, are vertical wells, so all we can hope for with both wells is that they find the same geology and that there is some free gas flow. If they prove successful in those areas, THAT'S when the real game starts!! That's when we will see the horizontals going in and multiple fracking within those horizontal zones.

So, that's why we cannot make judgements on one well and one flow rate and how significamt Hervey-1 and Keppel-1 will be to the very future of Icon Energy.

And both of those wells are being drilled RIGHT NOW .