North Carolina has no history of large-scale commercial oil and gas extraction, and the state’s legis la tive framework for regulating drilling was, until recently, based on laws passed in the 1940s. However, areas of the state are likely to undergo hori zontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing for natural gas and oil in the near future. North Carolina thus has a unique opportunity to produce a...

Renewable energy is seen as the future source for meeting the world’s growing demand, with geothermal offering a constant and independent supply. Tapping geothermal energy is not always straightforward as deep drilling is required in order to access this high -temperature resource. Geothermal drilling is expensive and is financed by the operator (usually districts or state representatives) with...

Small-scale morphology of gas hydrate is important for understanding the formation of gas hydrate deposits, for estimating the concentrations of gas hydrate from geophysical data, and for predicting their response to climate change or commercial production. The recent use of borehole pressure coring tools has allowed marine gas-hydrate-bearing sediments to be recovered with centimeter to sub-mi...

Multi-component Seismic Data Gas producers across the Gulf of Mexico are targeting deeper and deeper drilling objectives. Most operators in the Gulf consider 30,000ft to be the deepest target depth that will be drilled for the next few years. To image geology at those depths, seismic reflection data must be acquired with offsets of at least 30,000ft. TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENTS IN NATURAL GAS EXPLO...

Recently, the economic feasibility of drilling a horizontal well improved drastically due to advances in drilling technology. Advantages of horizontal wells over vertical well applications have been confirmed by many scientists(1-4) and operators(5-7). Horizontal wells showed many distinct advantages over vertical ones such as improvement of well productivity, attenuation of sand production, an...

As oil and gas production moves to ever more challenging areas, increased use of technology becomes increasingly important. One technology that can contribute towards achieving safe and economic production from such areas is computer-aided process engineering. We outline the use of such technology in two (of many) instances: Managed pressure drilling (MPD) for deep-offshore applications and nat...

The costs associated with drilling and completing wells are a major factor in determining the economic feasibility of producing energy from geothermal resources. In EGS power plants, estimates place drilling costs as accounting for 42%-95% of total power plant costs (Tester et al., 1994) depending on the quality of the EGS reservoir. An earlier correlation first developed by Milora and Tester (...

Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have enhanced energy production but raised concerns about drinking-water contamination and other environmental impacts. Identifying the sources and mechanisms of contamination can help improve the environmental and economic sustainability of shale-gas extraction. We analyzed 113 and 20 samples from drinking-water wells overlying the Marcellus and Bar...