Eric Vaughan (left), Cuadrilla’s well services director, and Jim Hancock
Cuadrilla became the first UK operator this afternoon to broadcast a webcast tour and live question and answer session from a shale gas site.
The one-hour broadcast was hosted by Jim Hancock, a former political editor of BBC North West, and Eric Vaughan, Cuadrilla’s well services director.
It comprised 27 minutes of questions in three sections, interspersed with pre-recorded film of the site.
The 20 questions that were answered covered issues such as impacts on air and water quality, monitoring, tanker movements, length of wells, refracking, employment, waste treatment and the number of wells and sites.
They were selected by a moderator from questions submitted by viewers. Questions that were not covered during the broadcast will be answered online later, Cuadrilla said.
The company was unable to give details this afternoon of the number of viewers or the number of submitted questions. But this information is expected next week and we’ll update this post with the details.
The sections of pre-recorded film showed the site’s membrane, groundwater monitoring boreholes, noise reduction measures, as well as covering the drilling process and the mud system. The footage showed puddles of rain water, which have been an ongoing issue at the Preston New Road site.
Cuadrilla said a recording of the broadcast would be available online shortly. All the pictures below are taken from the film or the live broadcast.
Site pictures from the broadcast
Cuadrilla said the site was lined with a membrane between layers of felt, to contain rainwater and spills.
Cuadrilla said the collected rain water would be used in drilling mud and fracking. Excess water was taken away by tanker for treatment. There is also mains water supply to the site.
Groundwater monitoring well. Cuadrilla said there was a monitoring well at each corner of the site. Instruments check groundwater below the membrane for methane
Cuadrilla said this tricorn drill bit had been used to drill a shallow stage of well. Teeth on the bit break the rock down as the bit rotates.
Stack of drill pipes. Eric Vaughan said the pipes were connected together and fed down the well during drilling. Once drilling was completed, the pipes and drill bit were removed from the well.
Drill casing. Cuadrilla said that once each drilling stage is complete, the drill casing is fed in to line the well and is cemented in place.
Cuadrilla said drilling mud is pumped down the drill pipe and forced back up the outside of the pipe. The mud cools the drill bit and carries small rock cuttings up and out of the well.
The film showed shakers made up of vibrating filters used to catch the rock cuttings and let the mud through
Mud pumps. Cuadrilla said that after passing through the shakers, the mud runs through a series of tanks and is then pumped back underground
Top drive. This section of the rig contains the motors which turn the drill pipe and drill bit.
Eric Vaughan said this giant hydraulic wrench, known as the iron roughneck, joins or disconnects sections of drill pipe
The site control room, known as the “doghouse”.
Categories: Industry
DRILL OR DROP? 
It was quite good. Too see such a knowledgeable guy like Eric Vaughn explain how things are done was great. He has 30 plus years in drilling and fracking and the idea that someone with limited technical knowledge can google a few ‘facts’ that override the expert technical experience available to the drilling companies is laughable. These people know how to do stuff safely. Drilling is hazardous! You need to know what you are doing! If I had a health issue I would want an expert doctor, not someone who has discovered Google.
I am sure that not many anti people will have watched it. To realise that they are dealing with expert qualified and experienced people, who can answer any question put to them must be intimidating. They do (unlike the antis) actually know what they are talking about.
I thought Eric Vaughn was the guy who was involved when the technical failings at Preese Hall happened in 2011 during the small fracking operations at the Cuadrilla well.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/preese-hall-shale-gas-fracturing-review-and-recommendations-for-induced-seismic-mitigation
If the guy with 30 plus years of experience can’t drill in the right place who can?
Did it mention that Cuadrilla have asked to have a future 2.6 magnitude seismic threshold which is a higher threshold than the 2.3 magnitude earthquake they induced in 2011?
The Preese hall report was requested by the then DECC and was conducted by the British Geological Survey so I think it is fair to say it should be taken seriously.
Are the cement bond problems that occurred during the plugging of the Preese Hall well mentioned?
I must watch it. I am sure these questions will have been answered.
Its technical John.
Firstly, there is a known and very rare risk of very minor seismic activity. Personally I can live with a few short lived ripples on my coffee.
Secondly, the companies are all doing 3D seismic to mitigate that minor risk, so they don’t frack near boundaries.
Perhaps you could explain what the ‘cement bond problems’ were John. I do know about this as I discussed it with Eric in great detail, when I called him to discuss some misunderstandings I had about the process. The difference would be that I have 12 years of drilling experience, finishing at a level where I was the senior engineer in my company. You dont get that far if you dont know your arse from your elbow.
Ken – I don’t know the full extent of your anocubitalastereognosis but I do know you must be aware that the significance of Cuadrilla’s seismic events in 2011 was rather more important than ripples in your coffee. Don’t you?
Wow! “anocubitalastereognosis” Respect refraction!
Think my coffee just rippled out of sheer grammatical pleasure!
‘Perhaps you could explain what the ‘cement bond problems’ were John. I do know about this as I discussed it with Eric in great detail’
Not detailed enough it seems or explained but not understood.
“In November we conducted a cement squeeze operation in the upper part of the wellbore to repair
several areas of poor bond across the Sabden Shale”
Click to access 5065-annex-a.pdf
I would have thought with all their experience Cuadrilla would not have needed to ask HSE a question that received the following reply.
From our FOI regarding correspondence between HSE and Cuadrilla
“Cuadrilla were looking for guidance on when a cement bond log was required and who was responsible for the interpretation of the logs”
Cuadrilla to HSE
“From our 5.5 inch bond log we have identified some questionable cement bonds”
No 3D survey carried out before the fracking of PH 1, having to ask basic questions on cement bonds, issues arising from the bonds when they were finally checked and forgetting to mention these significant facts to others……….
You are right. They have not got far.
If your tummy starts to rumble
Best be quick
As prices tumble
http://www.ragfrack.co.uk/aj-lucas-share-price-drops/
Ken Wilkinson, you’re not going to feel a shallow earthquake with a local magnitude of between 1.5 to 2.3 from a soft rock site that amplifies seismic waves in Fylde (Lancashire) in the South West of England, are you, so any short-lived ripples on your coffee will definitely not be due to any fracking activities on the Fylde Coast. None of the properties on the Fylde Coast have been designed or built according to antiseismic regulations and many properties, old and new, have been damaged by differential settlement and subsidence.
Although at least 21% of earthquakes are caused by human activity, our earthquake baseline in Fylde was ZERO until fracking induced 58 earthquakes in 2011, making 100% of Fylde’s earthquakes caused by human activity (fracking). 50 earthquakes were caused by fracking fluid injection into a fault zone between 31st March 2011 and 27th March 2011, with a further 8 earthquakes continuing after treatment until 2nd August 2011.The fault faied repeatedly and the earthquakes continued after the final frack stage at Preese Hall 1 well.
This area is heavily faulted, and since frack fluid travels through bedding planes via cracks opened by high-pressure fracking, there’s no preventing future fracking-fluid entering any of the unnamed fault systems that connect to the fractures opened by fracking.
Despite the threshold of local magnitude 0.5 for the suspension of operations, there is no guarantee that any fracking-induced seismicity that reaches 0.5ML will stop there when fracking is shut down in response.
To conclude, It’s not possible for you and Cuadrilla to claim that there’s a “very rare risk of very minor seismic activity” in Fylde from fracking. These attempts to downplay the seismic risk would be laughable, if it weren’t such a serious error in judgement. The experts have said: “We agree with the conclusion that the observed seismicity was caused by the hydraulic fracture treatments at Preese Hall. However, we are not convinced by the projected low probability of future earthquakes during future treatments. We believe it is not possible to state categorically that no further earthquakes will be experienced during a similar treatment at a nearby well.” https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/15745/5075-preese-hall-shale-gas-fracturing-review.pdf
I thought it had all the authority and validity and promise for the future as the Conservative Party Conference in Sheffield?
Once you turned up the sound to hear what was said above the coughing of the locals and it was a bit of a surprise when a member of the protesting public ran up and whilst avoiding the falling letters off the sign and gave the poor chap a P45? But otherwise it was quite educational if a bit long?
So you get that gassy stuff and that black gooey stuff from pushing that big rusty pointy things into the GROUND! Well, well, i never would have guessed that? From the industry explanations i thought is t was all done with mirrors and CGI?
i cant wait to get the Directors Cut on Blu Ray? Forget Blade Runner 2049, i want Frack Bummer 2017!
Smoke and mirrors you’re a bunch of cowboys
I think the reasons most people won’t have watched it, Ken is that either they were at work, or they were at KM8 Protection Camp, or (unlike yourself) they had the wisdom to realise that it would very likely be a totally one-sided PR exercise designed only as placatory window dressing.
Science and evidence is not a PR exercise. Ry. Where is the evidence of harm, or damage to the environment from the fracking process? The answer is that there is NONE! Yep a few cowboy drillers with badly drilled wells in the early days left a legacy of minor issues with water quality. ( in domestic water wells that almost no one uses in the UK).
Wisdom? From antifrackers? Now you are having a laugh! You believe that the ‘List of the Harmed’ is evidence, when it has been shown to be anecdotal? Same with the evidence ‘base’ for the NY, German and France bans. It doesnt exist, just bullshit from the anti groups. See the result of the complaint I made from serial ‘misleaders’ Friends of the Earth. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-38499811
And can you explain why the SNP, after TWO separate investigations into the safety of the process that found that there were no serious issues with fracking, decided to BAN the process? We are in a sad place when science is ignored based on thousands of pro forma complaints that the people who signed em didnt understand anyway
So, why are Ken and I visiting DOD then Ry?
Perhaps some of us actually believe you gain by debate with people you might not agree with. Those who want only one viewpoint usually want to hide something. Let’s not burn books we don’t agree with-or the current visual version of that.
Remember the twaddle about the viewing area? Goodness, can’t have people who agree with DYOR.
Hancock’s half hour used to be our entertainment for the week. Now, we have three times that on offer. Progress!
Ken, you’re either in the pocket of Cuadrilla/Third Energy, or more naive than a new-born baby. It’s not what they’re willing to show us that’s the problem, it’s what they don’t want to (and surprise surprise, won’t).
Thanks for the report Ruth. I did not watch it ‘live’. I did not know about it and would not have known where to go to watch it live.
Ken Wilkinson – Has Eric Vaughn had decades of fracking Lancashire geology?
Fossil fuels need to stay in the ground.
As I’ve typed this at least one person somewhere int he world has died because of climate change.
(Kofi Annan 2009 -“Global warming causes 300,000 deaths a year”)
Fylde needs more farming. leisure and tourism NOT fracking. Fossil fuels are for fossils – our future is renewable!
And some of us Ry, also have a little understanding of geography. But an epidemic of fake news has a habit of getting out of control. No wonder the public should not be allowed to look behind the “official” verdicts.
Not in the pocket of anyone. Happily retired but with a low bullshit tolerance. 12 years in drilling as a graduate engineer and was ‘District Engineer’ in my final post. Thats the trouble shooter who sorts out the problems, so if I was naive, the engineers and supervisors I dealt with would not have accepted me.
The big problem you have is that you assume that Cuadrilla have something to hide. With FOI, the mass of regulation, and open declaration of everything, thats difficult to understand. Shale drilling is low risk, and there is a massive evidence base to support that.
Another typical KennyWPara fudge statement there – It’s not just the drilling that concerns people Ken – surely you realise that?
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So there’ve never been any problems associated with fracking, Ken; the oil and gas industries are always totally open and honest, have always reported & rectified everything that’s gone wrong immediately, there’s a long proven track-record of fracking being 100% safe in the UK, and gold-standard monitoring will be carried out by the totally independent EA (who of course have no vested interests). Got it.
Hahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahaha.
google fracking and HEALTH, worried about miscarrages around fracksites not the odd ‘ripple in your coffee’ – Not in Anyones Backyard
Stop ‘Googling’.
Ry-don’t put your blinkers on me. I am simply supporting a company making an effort to provide information. There have been plenty of antis on DOD complaining about the lack of information. Now Cuadrilla supply some, it is shouted down. Can’t afford some of the undecided becoming decided?
Ry-do you have ANY knowledge concerning the track-record of fracking in the UK? I suspect you don’t because you will not find it on Giggle, but I suspect Ken does have that sort of knowledge. So, in that respect, I will note what Ken has said as there could be real experience there.
I think as it is the antis shouting down the provision of information, they should be a bit careful about who has what to hide. Certainly just about trashed any validity to any support/not support surveys. If the audience is not informed, total waste of time then. Why spend time organising meetings with speakers advising “DYOR”, and then trying to stop that?
David-could that Giggle “fact” have anything to do with more babies being born around fracking sites?? There is “evidence” to support that too. (Probably to do with increased disposable income equals increase in alcohol consumption equals-guess what?) “A lot of Giggle equals little common sense”- a frequent comment noted on University contributions these days. Sorry for the negative comment, but to drag forth this type of scaremongering within a section where Cuadrilla are being debated for supplying the public with a source of information that can be directly questioned by the public, really emphasises a big problem for the antis. I’m just waiting for the comments when/if gas really starts to be produced, and then costed. That should really be interesting. But, I would advise not to have used up all the credibility in that respect prior to those events.
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It seems the only arguments the pro-frackers have to offer are patronising condescension and censorship. Great that they’re not intelligent enough to have worked out yet how counter-productive to their cause that is!
What are your arguments? Stories of doom that have taken place in foreign lands via ‘Google’? The only moan you can have about fracking in the UK was a minor earth tremor which will be highly unlikely to happen again due to advancements in the industry.
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