Producers would microwave oil shale formations with a beam as powerful as 500 household microwave ovens, cooking the kerogen and releasing the oil. It also would turn the water found naturally in the deposits to steam, which would help push the oil to the wellbore. “Once you remove the oil and water,” Kearl continues, “the rock basically becomes transparent” to the microwave beam, which can then penetrate outward farther and farther, up to about 80 feet from the wellbore. It doesn’t sound like much, but a single microwave-stimulated well, which would be drilled in formations on average nearly 1,000 feet thick, could pump about 800,000 barrels. Qmast plans to have its first systems deployed in the field in 2017 and start producing by the end of that year.So in another year, we may see production begin. And even greenies would have to concede this is promising:
Fracking can slurp up to 10 million gallons of water per operation — not good, especially in the arid West. “We don’t need water for our process,” Kearl says, “and we don’t have wastewater to dispose of afterward.” In fact, microwave extraction might produce water — one barrel of water for every three barrels of oil. In situ recovery using microwaves also avoids the massive environmental impact of mining and then processing the kerogen. What’s more, natural gas that often is flared off in conventional oil-well production could be used to power the generator that creates the microwaves.What will count strongly is whether the economics of microwave fracking can beat those of conventional fracking. And so far, it seems not:
... there’s a much bigger problem with microwaves as a means of extracting oil, and that’s money. Microwaving a piece of shale rock 1,000 feet below ground takes quite a lot of energy. Now, this energy could come from the associated gas at the well or—why not—from renewable sources. Even so, the pumping cost per well remains about $9, which is more or less the same as the pumping cost of a conventional or a fracking well. In other words, for all its benefits, the microwave approach needs higher international oil prices to become commercially viable.
Why? "Because it isn’t really a natural resource extraction method, not in its economics it’s not. Really, in its economics, it is a manufacturing process. As BP says:"
The key point here is that the nature of fracking is far more akin to a standardised, repeated, manufacturing-like process, rather than the oneoff, large-scale engineering projects that characterise many conventional oil projects. The same rigs are used to drill multiple wells using the same processes in similar locations. And, as with many repeated manufacturing processes, fracking is generating strong productivity gains.But fracking, whether conventional or microwave, has a flexibility advantage over traditional pumping. Compared to pump wells, fracking wells can be set up much quicker and typically run for only a year or two and then either shut down or get moved. This makes fracking both more responsive to and affected less by market price elasticity. That is, fracking wells can be put into production quickly when oil prices support production profitability (responsiveness) and when prices fall below, they can be simply run until they're dry, which won't be long anyway, then shut down (less effect).
As you know, the strength of manufacturing productivity has led to a trend decline in the prices of goods relative to services. A fascinating question raised by fracking – and its manufacturing-type characteristics – is whether it will have the same impact on the relative price of oil. A key issue here is whether these types of repeated, standardised processes can be applied outside of the US and to more conventional types of production. Can the discipline of lean manufacturing be applied to conventional oil operations?
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