Propane Fracking—Another Possible Step Toward Energy Revolution

Propane Fracking—Another Possible Step Toward Energy Revolution


Hydrofracturing, fracking, is a revolutionary technique that is extracting increasing amounts of natural gas that was previously not obtainable from shales. two problems have been that the technique required large amounts of water to do the fracturing, and much of the water comes back highly salty and polluted in other ways.

What if hydrofracturing could be done without … the hydro?

One technique, still only used a few times in Canada, replaces water with propane refrigerated to liquid. As contract with the rock in the well warms the gelled propane, it expands back to a gas and generates the pressure to cause the needed fracturing.

The propane is more expensive than water, but it has two major advantages. First, the tonnage of propane required is significantly less than water, so the infrastructure footprint of supply trucks is much less. Second, and more important, there is no stream of contaminated brine to deal with. Any propane that comes back up can be sold with the methane (natural gas) or recycled for other fracking operations. Thus, the footprint of brine treatment and disposal is eliminated. Finally, and still less substantiated, the propane may allow more methane out because water may block some of the methane flow.

Possible reasons why propane fracking has not been tried in the United States include caution over a new technique, the fact that the technique is proprietary to one Canadian company, and the cost of propane and propane recovery.

Anthony Brino and Brian Nearing provided more details about propane fracking in, “New Waterless Fracking Method Avoids Problems, But Drillers Slow to Embrace.” It was posted at Inside Climate News at

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20111104/gasfrac-propane-natural-gas-drilling-hydraulic-fracturing-fracking-drinking-water-marcellus-shale-new-york

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