Innovation: We Like It

Mark Green
Posted December 19, 2012

Get past the snarkiness at the top of this post on Energy & Capital’s site, and there’s some interesting info on some of the innovation going on in the fracking end of the industry:

"How’s this for irony? Fracking champions are looking toward solar power to try and cut down on pollution. … Halliburton, for example, is quite heavily invested in fracking. The company has come out with a fracking machine that uses gravitational and solar power to function. The so-called SandCastle is about two years old now, and it has already been implemented across dozens of sites within the U.S., Businessweek report. … Halliburton and three other major oil-field service providers collectively invested some $2.04 billion in 2011 to try and make their services more environmentally-friendly."

More:

"Ecologix Environmental Systems LLC manufacturers a fracking wastewater recycling technology that uses air bubbles, while Verenium is producing non-toxic enzymes that can break down ammonium persulfate, a caustic by-product of fracking."

Now, back to the snark. According to our handy online dictionary, “irony” refers to the coming together of events, ideas or words that are contradictory to each other. It’s ironic when two things come together that you’d never think could come together. Alas, the word’s often misused – as in E&C’s post, and here’s why.

America’s oil and natural gas companies are all over innovation – and probably none more than those using hydraulic fracturing or fracking to get natural gas and oil from shale and other tight rock formations. We’ve noted a number of initiatives companies are pursuing to make fracking operations cleaner, less water intensive, more effective and more efficient. The notion that fracking and innovation are ironic, strange bedfellows – that oil and natural companies would be the last to capitalize on energies and new technologies to improve performance on multiple levels – is simply incorrect.

The industry is made up of technology companies with long histories of developing strategies and the tools to make operations run better, to make their footprint smaller, to do a better job of protecting the environment. They do this because safe and responsible energy development requires it.