Well, for starters, fraccing is NOT a "drilling process". It is a completion method, intended to enhance the flow of oil and/or natural gas from a formation with relatively low permeability.
Drilling is a separate process, and the casing strings and liner for production are cemented in place using the drilling rig.
Keep in mind that the pressure (and heat) needed to render source rock thermally mature, that is, capable of producing hydrocarbons, generally requires a depth of burial at some time in the producing formation's existence of roughly 10,000 feet, unless there happens to be a source of heat, geologically. That doesn't mean the rocks above oil bearing rocks cannot be eroded away to make those oil reservoirs closer to the surface, nor does it preclude shallower reservoirs associated with geological structures such as salt domes. But most such structures are not what the 'Shale revolution' is about. Wells were drilled into such obvious production targets, at least onshore, and some have been producing oil for 50 to 100 years or more.
The wells we are talking about with these low permeability reservoirs count on three things to be productive. First, the presence of hydrocarbons, second, sufficient reservoir to contain commercially recoverable hydrocarbons, and third, the ability to drill long well bores laterally in the pay zone, to increase the amount of potentially productive rock exposed to the well bore. These rock formations are commonly of low enough permeability that they would not produce oil at a rate which would enable them to be produced in a vertical well. THa's the horizontal drilling part.
The way to enhance the ability of the rock to produce oil and / or gas is to treat the rock to open up additional pathways for the oil and/or gas to reach the wellbore.
This is where fraccing (hydraulic fracturing) comes in. It is a completion technique. Fluids are pumped in with a slurry of sand at high enough pressure to create fractures in the rock, and the sand is there to hold those fractures open.
That's all it does, it works, and if equipment is good and basic safety precautions are observed, it is rare that there is any danger to the environment caused at the surface, because the fracturing part of the process takes place a couple of miles down.
It is a separate process, part of readying a well to go on line as a producer.
When the fracturing is complete, fluids produced by the well are monitored by Flowback Teams, who keep track of the volume, type, and rate the fluids return. Frac fluid is often re-used in a series of wells, if captured during flowback, and the other wells to be completed are near enough to do so. Otherwise, that, along with produced salt water, is disposed of in injection wells, pumped into a rock layer well below the surface.
A Ban. She went there. Like a high water mark, the most Leftist policy ever advocated by anyone who seeks to be a candidate is what I use to gauge what they will do once they have the reins of power firmly in hand. She has backed water on so many issues so hard in this campaign that she could make the Mississippi flow north.
The threat, of course, (back to fraccing) is that wells (if even) drilled will be forced to produce at a much lower initial rate. From early Bakken wells in the Elm Coulee Field in Montana (where the Bakken boom started) fracced wells produced at 3-5 times the rate of unfracced wells, and produced more oil than was anticipated early on. We doubled Montana's oil production in a few years, and shifted to North Dakota where the State went from producing 100,000 BOPD (Barrels of Oil Per Day) to 1.4 million BOPD.
The same sort of thing is going on in the Permian Basin, in New Mexico, in the Barnett and Haynesville Shales, the Eagle Ford, Marcellus, and Utica, and elsewhere. This is the production technique that catapulted domestic energy production high enough to make us Energy Independent.
But there's a catch. That flowack period, and in fact the period of high production has its limits. Over roughly two years, the production volume of a horizontal well, drilled, and completed using hydraulic fracturing, will decline to about 20% of its initial production. That early production pays off the cost of drilling and completing the well, the rest is profit that can be used to drill new wells. New wells boost overall production, but will decline along roughly the same curve, then stabilize at the reduced production rates. Stop that process, stop the completion technique and a lot of wells will not be drilled here in the US, because the ROI will be too slow and the losses to inflation will be too severe. The 'bump' from those wells in the temporal envelope from completion to more stabilized production will not be there any more.
Expect the oil industry to drill elsewhere, but not in the US, (nearly 1/5 of which has been shut down now--Alaska--by edict).
If, with unlimited spending that seems so popular, the US Dollar loses its reserve currency status, we will be stuck converting dollars to something else to buy oil from abroad. Neither is a good deal, when we could be bringing those dollars back home by selling surplus production elsewhere, and having lower fuel costs for the production and shipment of goods right here at home. (Those shipping costs and energy costs being one of, if not THE, main drivers of the inflation we have been enduring.)
