Oil wells converted to fresh water wells

[Davey Crockett]

Is anyone here familiar with this project ? It doesn't pass the smell test and I'm sick and tired of getting screwed over as a taxpayer because of poor management and political blunders in our state.

The orphan oil well issue is out of hand and needs a damn good overhaul along with some of our state leaders and politicians

What really irks me is the covid relief money that was used was designated to our local struggling small business that were as a direct result of covid.

You can PM me and remain anonymous if you want.


https://www.willistonherald.com/news/oil_and_energy/funds-for-converting-oil-wells-to-livestock-water-wells-among-arpa-projects-approved-by-north/article_586fd6a4-4665-11ec-a67b-13e948030833.html



I just looked at the permit forms this morning and the state requires a 50,000 bond to drill an oil well in ND or a blanket bond to drill 2 or more wells for 100,000 Helms recently said in an article it costs 100,000 to bond an oil well, according to the permit prosess a company can bond thier yearly drilling program for that.

Oil companies plan ahead and sell/trade assets before merging then letting one company go bankrupt to stick the state with the abandon wells.



https://apnews.com/article/0c7ed45aca2daa707d7fcea8fbefb737

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23052021/north-dakota-orphaned-abandoned-oil-gas-wells-methane-emissions/

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They asked for 33 million and recieved 66 million too much to spend in a year so they gave the rest of it away to oil companies. Double burn.

"State leaders designated $66 million in federal CARES Act funding for plugging abandoned wells, $16 million of which appeared unlikely to be spent by the deadline so was ultimately redirected to reimburse companies for the cost of acquiring water used in the fracking process".

 

[Obi-Wan]

16 wells at a cost of 3.2 million is $ 200,000.00 / well. what is the cost of just drilling a new water well ?

 

[Allen]

Are these school sections that are to be getting water wells funded by the taxpayer, or are they private land? I guess they could also be federal, but I know there's been efforts already over the years to get water to federal tracts of land out west.

 

[Davey Crockett]

I don't know the exact locations and don't see any newly posted fox hills well reports in that area but it looks like plenty of water wells in that area are around 200' That would put the cost around 10-15K complete and with all the controls needed . Probably even get a solar pump installed for that $ figure.

 

[eyexer]

Imagine that. Rancher through the legislative process getting freebies and the sportsmen get the onion

 

[Davey Crockett]

Imagine that. Rancher through the legislative process getting freebies and the sportsmen get the onion

You nailed it. I did some digging and it's ugly. I'm not anti farming/ranching or oilfield , Iv'e made a living at all but i'm sick and tired of these damn associations, state leaders and politicians raping us tax payers for our hard earned money and laughing all the way to the bank. As long as theres funding I'm "OK" with a "Little" help to anyone one or any industry in need but this one is way way over the top.

I could go on and on about the negative cash flow about this "brainstorm" on all ends but it's too late, they already have the money . I'll go out on a limb and say these water wells will cost 70% or more over the cost just plugging the oil well and drilling a new water well , plus they not be up to specifications and they will have a shorter lifespan. It's a scam if Iv'e ever seen one.

I keep thinking of our grandkids and what life will be like when they are our age at the rate we are spending all this "Free" money that is up for grabs.


Im glad that the Kansas corporation commision held thier grounds.

https://www.kdhe.ks.gov/DocumentCenter/View/1644/Statement-Prohibiting-Conversion-of-Oil-or-Gas-Wells-and-Dry-Holes-to-Water-Wells-PDF

We need a hot shot investigative reporter in ND that is willing to go against the grain and call out these unwelcome projects and the leaders and report to the people every day on the 6 and 10 news with interviews of how and why the projects came to be. Mostly declined interviews I suppose but you can learn from them too. This is just one of several political blunders under our nose right now.

 

[WormWiggler]

You nailed it. I did some digging and it's ugly. I'm not anti farming/ranching or oilfield , Iv'e made a living at all but i'm sick and tired of these damn associations, state leaders and politicians raping us tax payers for our hard earned money and laughing all the way to the bank. As long as theres funding I'm "OK" with a "Little" help to anyone one or any industry in need but this one is way way over the top.

I could go on and on about the negative cash flow about this "brainstorm" on all ends but it's too late, they already have the money . I'll go out on a limb and say these water wells will cost 70% or more over the cost just plugging the oil well and drilling a new water well , plus they not be up to specifications and they will have a shorter lifespan. It's a scam if Iv'e ever seen one.

I keep thinking of our grandkids and what life will be like when they are our age at the rate we are spending all this "Free" money that is up for grabs.


Im glad that the Kansas corporation commision held thier grounds.

https://www.kdhe.ks.gov/DocumentCenter/View/1644/Statement-Prohibiting-Conversion-of-Oil-or-Gas-Wells-and-Dry-Holes-to-Water-Wells-PDF

We need a hot shot investigative reporter in ND that is willing to go against the grain and call out these unwelcome projects and the leaders and report to the people every day on the 6 and 10 news with interviews of how and why the projects came to be. Mostly declined interviews I suppose but you can learn from them too. This is just one of several political blunders under our nose right now.

there you go, second (or umpteenth) career....

 

[Davey Crockett]

I would but that takes a trait that I don't have.

 

[KDM]

Using an old oil well for fresh water seems about as smart as using an old truck stop toilet for a punch bowl.

 

[espringers]

Agreed

 

[TWN]

Plugging off a well and then shooting a water well higher up is not new technology. Whether or not its cost effective would depend on how deep your aquifer is, I know of a couple of them in Mckenzie county that were converted to fox hills wells. I bet it would cost $75-85k to drill and case a fox hills well out here. Water for livestock is generally also water for wildlife.

 

[TFX 186]

Speaking of water wells and oil wells...... I started having some issues with my water well 2 years ago. When I pumped the well hard it silted up so bad it plugged my house filters and I had to try pump my hydrant for days to try clear it up. It never really cleared up so I had to just limit my usage to little or nothing until it settled down. I had never had trouble with the well before and it's about 30 years old. Low and behold I ended up burning out the submersible pump and had to call a well guy to change it for me. I showed him the fine sand I had pumped out of it and the first question he asked is where did they drill the oil well around here. I told him about 6-7 miles west of me. He just shook his head. My well is almost 500' deep. Do any of you water/oil well guys have any info about this? Is it possible to mess up an aquifer drilling through it? Don't they use precautions of some kind when drilling oil wells so this doesn't happen? Is the old timer well driller just full of it?

 

[Davey Crockett]

Are there areas where Fox Hills is the only option ? I looked at quite a few well reports and only saw 1 fox Hills well , everything else was 100-200' . Either way , I only have enough money to pay for my own utilities and i'm tired of paying for other peoples stuff. Wildlife will survive , They always have and always will be smart enough to find a water source.

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TFX , I don't think an oil well 6 or 7 miles away would affect a water well , If they did you would hear of a lot of other people with issues too.

 

[Allen]

TFX,

In order to lead you to what's most likely the problem here, let me as a geologist give you some things to think about. Maybe 10 years ago I was reading some frac'ing reports on wells in ND, I believe they were Whiting wells. Anyway, Whiting installed sensors to detect the distance away from the well bore the fractures extended. If I remember correctly, a little over 2,000 ft was the most I ran across in that report. Can they do it farther than that, absolutely. And two wells within 4,000 ft of each other can certainly have fractures that intersect. I've heard several times of older wells adjacent to new wells where they had to shut in the older wells to avoid them pulling in sand. Importantly though, you must always remember that these wells are in the same geologic formation.

Continuing on the geology part here, yes...people try really hard to not induce fractures of a vertical nature. The reason for this is because as we all know, oil is lighter than water. It usually is "trapped" right under a nearly impermeable rock formation. In this case, the wells are in the Bakken Shale, and while shale is generally fairly impermeable, shale is a very fissile rock. Which simply means it's really easy to break. Other geologic formations, such as limestone are much more difficult to fracture, probably by a few orders of magnitude. This suggests that one can easily fracture the shale without fracturing an immediately overlying rock formation so long as you know their respective shear strength. Just don't exceed the sheer strength of your caprock, because if you do...your oil will literally start floating upwards. I worked on a fracture job as a work-over rig floorhand back in the 80s when we did exactly this. We turned a 150 barrel a day well into a 40 barrel (I'm just fudging the numbers, but you get the idea) most likely because we fractured its caprock. Wasn't until I actually went to UND for geology that I figured out what happened.

Anyway, I would be hard pressed to believe the oil development has anything to do with your well problems. So let's look at what may be the possible contributors to your well problems.

You say you "pumped the well hard". What exactly do you mean by that? Did you install a larger, higher volume pump? Because if you did, that's all I would need to hear to know the problem. Wells by nature have more design concerns than the average homeowner would necessarily know about. Well screens can be made out of PVC or stainless steel, but they are supposed to be sized according to matrix of the aquifer. The well screen and its surrounding packing material are intended to not allow movement of the aquifer matrix (sand, silts, clays, etc) into the well. If a person over pumps a well, you can cause cavitation in the well screen as water velocities are too great. This will quickly cause damage to the well screen which now allows in larger particle sizes, etc. Just to be clear, well screens and their gravel pack do fail on wells at random times for no apparent reason. I'd argue that they were headed for failure already and the homeowner just didn't recognize the symptoms, but I kind of think you saw the symptoms and that's why you have filters on your home's water coming from the well. It's most likely been failing from the day it was first installed. It just took XX years for it to get bad enough to create a problem.

At this point, it would appear that whatever the cause, your well is on limited time. Sorry man...

 

[TFX 186]

Allen,
Thanks for the feedback. What I was talking about by pumping it hard is this. I have a hydrant just a little distance from the well head. The hydrant pumps wide open. I had a 3/4 hp pump in the well. I watered my garden with the hydrant. When I use the hydrant full out and not throttled down, it stirs the really fine sand really bad. I actually installed the filters about 2 years before any sand showed up. I had a water company install some treatment and it was suggested to also install a large home filter before the water hit anything in the house. No one around my area has a decent well. The old guys woudn't spend the money to dig deep enough to get water that wasn't coal vein water. Do you think I would be able to dig another well in my yard of the same depth and not have the real fine sand? The old timer well guy said that fine of sand can't be filtered or screened out in the casing? And yes you re correct, the average guy living in the country and having a well, knows very little about water wells and who to get to have a good chance of getting a decent well dug and finished. Usually, it's IF you can get someone to drill one or fix one. I don't see any chance of rural water for this household in my lifetime anyway.
PS for any of you that take your good water for granted, there are those of us that haul water or will be hauling water soon. Maybe after the government is done making sure all the reservations in ND have free water, the rest of us, farmers, ranchers and average Joes will get a shot at decent water. 3rd world problems in our backyard! Sorry for the rant.
Thanks Allen
Fish On!

 

[svnmag]

Are the wells fresh to keep out marlin?

 

[Allen]

TFX, send me a PM with the location of this well, in township, range, and section. Unless your well was an undocumented immigrant, I should be able to find the well log. Maybe it will give me a little more insight as to the geology you're dealing with on the well's performance. Or, if you'd prefer, you can go yourself to the ND State Water Commission's webpage and track down your well log. Then again, if you commissioned the well you probably already have it.

 

[WormWiggler]

Could a near by fresh water well be providing FW for oil field use?

 

[Allen]

TFX,

FWIW, if the problem with the well is indeed the gravel pack and/or screen that is failing, you can certainly drill another well right in the exact same area, within a few feet even. Heck, if the casing is PVC, you could simply drill that right out and set the well at the exact same depth, etc. Davey would probably better know how easy that is since I've never had to do it.


It would be nice to run a camera down the casing to at least inspect the screen, someone in the state should have one capable of going to that depth.

 

[johnr]

My previous home had a water well on site, in town, was great when we first moved in, when we sold the place it was down to 2.5 gallons a minute, which would run the sprinkler system just barely. They should have around a 5gal/minute to be pressured enough.
We only used it for the lawn and garden, but was that ever nice to keep a green beautiful yard for virtually free.

It was about 45 feet deep, but clean clear water, never stained the house or fence.

Now I pay for water at the new place, grass is still green, but it cuts into the Ice Cold Busch Light budget