THANK YOU FOR WATCHING THE BEST HOUR OF
owing into our everyday lives,
Cameron Energy must bring in half a million gallons
of new oil every year.
- [John] Little more, that’s good.
- To that end, they’re betting big
on a brand new $100,000 well and a tried and true method
of extracting oil called fracking.
- [John] That’s good.
- [Narrator] That’s where this guy comes in, John Stewart.
As vice-president of Cameron Energy and frack team leader
it’s up to him to bring in the new well on time
and on target.
And as with most things fracking related,
the pressure is on.
- [John] That’s good tag, attaboy.
- If something goes wrong or the well turns out to be a dud,
then we’ll just wind up with $100,000 hole in the ground
with nothing to show for it.
We’ll either bring that well to life,
be productive, pay for itself and keep everyone employed,
or probably have to be talking about layoffs.
- [John] Pitter patter, let’s get at’er.
- [Narrator] To keep costs down to a minimum.
John and his team must finish the frack job by day’s end.
Fortunately, they’re already making good headway.
- [John] That’s how we do that.
- So far they’ve drilled down 2,000 feet
through 17 separate layers
or stages of oil-bearing sandstone.
From there a bit was sent down to cut weak points or notches
into the rock before refilling the hole with gravel.
Seems a little counterintuitive,
but that gravel acts as a backstop
when they lower another tool known as a packer
to pump water into the notches at 3,000 PSI,
creating a network of ruptures that free up the flow of oil.
So far, they’re are two stages in
and preparing for their third.
But first the gravel between them and their next stage
needs to be flushed out.
(water gushing) (light upbeat music)
- That’s the gravel we put down that hole yesterday,
we’ve got to get all of that out of there
before we can frack.
We’ll work it down past a notch, back up a notch,
wash it all out.
- [Narrator] Though most of us just refer to it as fracking,
the technical term for this process
is actually hydro-fracturing,
that’s because the key player here is water.
A single frack job can require
as much as 100,000 gallons of it,
which is trucked in from the previous frack site,
every 30 minutes.
- Here she comes.
So right now we just flush.
It should be ready to frack
and hopefully get a nice clean break.
- [Narrator] If it produces, like John thinks it will,
this well is expected to churn out upwards of 50,000 gallons
a year and could be in operation for decades.
But, of course, in this line of work
there are no guarantees.
- Every frack job we’re either gonna make a good well,
or I guess we’ll go home empty handed.
It’s make it or break it time.
Yeah, go ahead, set it.
- Hey, Jay got he water truck stuck in the ditch.
We’ve got to get it out for more water.
All right, right up here?
- [Man] Yes.
- [Man] Lets go get it out.
- This John does not need.
With the water truck onsite already half empty
he’ll have to rescue the next one from the ditch
or risk shutting down the whole operation.
(bleep)
There’s a lot of bleeping in the oil business,
because there’s a lot of pressure on guys like John,
bringing in the new oil well is essential
to Cameron Energy’s survival.
But so, too, is ensuring that the 2,000 other wells
on the property keep the oil flowing
for the American public.
And making sure that happens is up to well tenders
like Brad Bawden.
- So we’ve got a busy day today.
We gonna try and get as many wells pumped as we can
and I’m pretty eager to get home
’cause it is my son’s birthday.
So we’re gonna get pumping.
- [Narrator] Across the U.S., wells like these
extract more than 4,000 gallons of oil per second
or about enough to fuel your average car for 10 years.
But unlike larger operations,
which can pump oil around the clock.
The wells at Cameron Energy need to be routinely shut off
to allow oil reservoirs to refill underground.
Years of experience and a pretty strict schedule
tell Brad when they’re ready to be fired up again.
- I open up the production valve, where the oil’s
gonna come up the tubing.
(motor revving)
- [Narrator] Pump jacks like this are the workhorses
of the oil industry
and their mechanics are ingeniously simple.
A gas or electric motor powers the above ground assembly,
which connects to a rod running 2,000 feet
down to the oil reservoir.
There a pair of one way valves work in tandem
to pump oil up to the surface.
And here in Pennsylvania, that oil is one of a kind.
- So if you notice the yellowish tint in this oil
you won’t see it anywhere else in the world.
This Pennsylvania crude oil is yellow
because it’s a paraffin based oil,
lightest, sweetest oil in the world.
So I’ve got a bunch more to get to right now
and we’re gonna get moving.
- [Narrator] Cameron Energy isn’t the first outfit
to target the rich oil reserves of Western Pennsylvania.
Roughnecks have been working in this region
since before the Civil War to extract
the all-important fluid that fuels our lives.
Just ask one of the latest in that lineage, Alex Grubbs.
- The importance of oil to America is it literally
runs everything, not only transportation,
but your means of heat sources, cooling sources,
electricity, most aspects of our life
you don’t even think about are affected by oil.
- [Narrator] And when a well runs dry,
it’s up to service operators like Alex to make sure
it’s safely decommissioned.
Today, he and his team are headed to 100-year-old well
that’s a little too close to another upcoming frack job
and could pose the serious threat if left open.
- If we don’t plug these wells you can I blow outs
during frack jobs if you don’t know where these wells are
and they’re not plugged.
You know, it’s important.
All right, ready.
- [Narrator] To ready the well for plugging
Alex and his team will remove the 100-year-old piping
so another crew can fill the hole with cement.
(upbeat music)
But working with hardware this old can be tricky
for even the most seasoned roughnecks.
- I mean, this is a World War I era well
drilled well before then,
and probably hasn’t been pumped since then.
So this pipe is so old you don’t know
what you’re going to encounter.
There it is.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
That inch and a quarter is bridged inside that packer plate.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] A bridged pipe is bad news
for Alex and his team.
It means the inner pipe is bent and become wedged
inside the outer pipe.
Continuing to pull with the same method runs the risk
that the inner pipe will break free
and fall hundreds of feet to the bottom of the well,
that in turn would obstruct the cement pipe
which must start at the very bottom and fill the hole
to the very top.
If it doesn’t well,
you remember what Alex said about blowouts?
- If we’re not careful here,
I don’t want to lose this and have to the fish
all this pipe, because you know what that’s gonna look like
if it falls down the well.
So let’s start shearing it carefully
and we’ll hook onto this two and a half
and we’ll keep pulling.
- [Narrator] To keep it from falling,
Alex and his team used shears to cut away the inner pipe
allowing them to unscrew outer pipe piece-by-piece.
- All right, let’s pick another one up.
We’ll just keep lifting and shearing and figure out
where this thing stuck at in there?
(upbeat music)
There’s our inch and a quarter.
Oh, that’s not good.
- Wow. - That’s rotted.
- Yeah, that’s rotted right up.
The rest of that string of tubing is in the hole.
- [Narrator] For Alex things just went from bad to worse.
With the broken pipe at the bottom of the well,
they’ll now have to try to fish it out.
How hard could that be?