Getting Down and Nerdy on Frac Chems
0:00 We're back with another Energy 101 episode. Thanks for joining us today. I'm Sydney, we have Julie and Misty, and our guest of honor is Kai Yogam from Fluid Energy. And today, we're talking
0:12 chemicals. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Of course, this is also Kai's first podcast ever. So round of applause. Yeah, thank you, round of applause for me. Thank you
0:23 for choosing. I'm nervous. Yeah, you want to win. Yeah, you're right, we're honored. When you become podcast famous, you'll say Starting here is what I wanted. This is history in the making,
0:33 for sure. It is, yep. So chemicals, obviously super important to all of energy specifically oil and gas. I know prior to recording, we talked about focusing really on drilling and fracking those
0:48 specific chemicals. I don't know about you guys, but I don't even remember, I'm sure I took a chemistry class in high school. Periodic people in here, right? Yeah, chemicals are definitely not
1:01 my thing. Yeah. Are you a chemical engineer by trade? I am a chemist by a background. Okay, I'm a chemist. Yeah, I started out at a small college in Chigashay, Oklahoma, University of Science
1:14 and Arts of Oklahoma. I always tell people that I graduated top of my class because I was the only chemist that
1:23 graduated during that semester So, I was also the bottom of my class, but I had, I kind of cut my teeth into the oil field about in 2011. Whenever I was getting my chemistry degree, there was a
1:37 oil field company, Fractec Services, that's had a chemical manufacturing plant there. And whenever I was trying to find chemistry jobs in a town of, you know, 16, 000 people, Yeah,
1:56 especially in Oklahoma. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so small town, Chickasha, Oklahoma, and I was fortunate enough to get a lab technician job doing quality assurance, quality control for the chemicals
2:05 that they're using. Yeah. And at the time, it was funny because whenever you're in a college class and you're talking about chemicals, you're talking about the formal IUPAC naming convention of
2:19 like how a chemical
2:24 is named and then whenever you get into the industry, there are trade names that people come up with. And so like that was kind of my first exposure into like, okay, surf, surf pro 2000. You
2:39 know, and I was like, this isn't a chemical. Like what is this? You know, and so I kind of started to realize that people take different chemistries, put them together for whatever application
2:50 it is. they need to accomplish, and then they call it whatever they want, and then. Yeah, I know how we say we're going to Google it. Yeah, Google is just searching, but yeah. Essentially, I
3:03 would think that that's the same as kind of like branded. Yeah, yeah, so you brand it, you put a trademark on it, and then after working there in a QAQC lab for a couple years, they decided to
3:17 shut down that lab And it's a new opportunity for a technical center in Houston opened up. Great. And so I got the opportunity to move into Houston just a couple miles away from here is where I was
3:29 working. And after being here for about five years, bouncing between there, I went to another chemical company called IOC. Mm-hm. I ended up moving back to be closer to family in Oklahoma, and
3:44 that's where I'm at now. Great, well, we're happy you made the trip down I don't think I realize that you came from Oklahoma. Yeah, yeah, very excited to be here. And, you know, I don't miss
3:54 the traffic at all. I was gonna say, it must be like, while I came from Midland, so it's a little bit of the same. Yeah. It's not that small, but like just a culture shock coming to Houston
4:07 from that small of town, I'm sure it was different. Yeah, for sure, it was different. But starting out
4:17 early in my career in Houston was very valuable just because Houston's the Mecca oil and gas. And I made a lot of really good connections early on that helped me increase my chemical knowledge base.
4:30 And I think it's fun to kind of start out by saying that I started out learning chemistry and chemicals and kind of what that was. And I had no idea what hydraulic fracturing was. And it took me
4:44 like actually years to really figure out you know, and like what is, what are these chemicals being used for? And so throughout my career, just starting from the chemical side and then asking,
4:57 okay, why are we doing this? What is this used for? That's how I've kind of learned the production drilling frat process. Right, comes with the territory. It's kind of how we are. I feel like
5:09 every day here, podcast aside, I feel like you never know who's gonna be in and out and what conversations are happening. And I'm always like, I feel like I'm just constantly like picking up a
5:19 little ten bit, yep, that I hear. Whether they're accurate or not. So when you went to school, I'm just gonna go on your background a little bit. When you went to school as a chemist, did you
5:28 know you were gonna be in oil and gas? Or like, what were you thinking? As you were like, you were just interested in chemistry? No, actually I am a failed doctor is what it is. Yeah, so I
5:41 started out kind of thinking that I wanted to do the biochemical route that way to go become a doctor. and then realized that I hate biology classes. And I didn't like memorizing different body
5:53 parts and things. Yeah. It's the one where my passion was. Right. I had family that was kind of pushing me to do that. And then after doing that for about a year and a half, I had a lot of math
6:04 and science courses completed already. And it would have, basically getting my chemistry degree was the fastest route to getting a degree. To getting out of there? Yeah. And so I finished up
6:17 those classes and like I said, whenever I got into the oil and gas business, it was because it was like literally the only job in town. Right, yeah. And so I had to fight
6:30 and beg and plead in order to get a job there. And then once I did, I was super happy because it led me to hear. Yeah, do you wear a lab coat?
6:39 Absolutely,
6:42 yeah. Last day is important, yeah. I wasn't expecting you to say yes. Yeah, well, when you're working in a lab, of course, I mean, you've got to wear the goggles, the gloves, the lab coat,
6:52 because at the end of the day, when you're working in a chemical manufacturing plane, even if you're just in the lab side of it, you're doing a little bit of RD, you're handling volatile chemicals
7:03 that could
7:05 stay with you, like on your hands and stuff, that you don't want to take home to your kids and things like that. Right So,
7:13 definitely safety first, because you want to come home with all your fingers and toes. Yeah. If that's the one thing I do remember from like high school, like biology and chemistry is always like
7:23 the safety readings. Yeah, the goggles. And that like huge shower thing. Oh, in case. And I wash station. I wash station. Yeah. Showers just in case, you know. You never know. So does your
7:34 day to day, are you in the lab working in there, or do you ever go, like what is your day to day? Sure. So. Early in my career, like I said, I'm a chemist. I started out working in the lab
7:46 doing a lot of tech services requests to where a customer would come in and say, we need a chemical solution for this problem. And then my job would be to work with the other chemists in the lab to
7:58 try and come up with a chemical solution that would solve whatever problem it is they're trying to achieve. And then after doing that for a while, I started to progress up as a chemist But then I
8:11 found that I wanted to be more customer-facing and started as the company that I was at, they actually created a role for me as like a technical sales guy. So I would interface between the lab and
8:24 the sales team. And so that is where I learned how to communicate with the end user. Because in a laboratory setting, it's like you're sitting in a room like this. It's got all the instruments
8:38 that you need and then you just hear information. from other people that saying, hey, I need you to do this. And oftentimes you don't know why you need to do it. And you just run the test, put
8:50 it into a report, give it to the people, and they go from there. And so I wanted to know why are they needing this? How does it help achieve whatever problem it is that they're trying to solve?
9:01 And then whenever I got that experience of being more customer facing, I really enjoyed that more than just kind of being in a lab Yeah. And so that helps me transition more into kind of the role
9:15 that I'm in today, which is the sales manager for Fluid Energy. Cool. Yeah. I mean, I could imagine it's helpful that you like genuinely knew what you were talking about. It's not like you got
9:28 hired as a sales person, they trained you in some of the chemicals, like you actually started in chemistry. So hopefully you're able to talk to both sides. That would put dots. Yeah.
9:40 Yeah, for sure, it's definitely helped me. I'm super thankful and very blessed to have the experience and the people that kind of helps mentor me early on in Mondays. Awesome, well, let's dive
9:53 in. Where do we want to start? So, yeah, so I thought that it would be fun to kind of talk about why chemicals are used in the different upstream processes that are involved in the willing gas.
10:10 So, obviously you start out with drilling a hole and then you have to frack, stimulate, and then after that, once everything's done, then you produce everything. And the types of chemicals that
10:23 are used in those different applications are specific to perform a job that's needed at the time And I think that. After that, it would be good to kind of discuss how not all chemicals are bad,
10:42 right? Like that's a perception that a lot of people have. I think that just once they hear chemicals, it's nasty and you got to worry. And you do, you got to be safe, but it's not like we're
10:55 all trying to give each other cancer out on tracking conditions, right? So
11:02 on the drilling side, very basic, what are you trying to do? You're trying to drill a hole in the ground so that way you can put metal pipe in there and make it easier to extract oil and gas out of
11:15 the earth. If you think about whenever you're drilling, not drilling, or just digging a hole in your backyard, you know, with a shovel, right? You take a shovel, you dig the hole and then
11:29 you're left with a hole and then you're left with a pile of dirt after that. And so you can imagine that whenever you're drilling a hole in the grounds, that's miles deep and miles long, you're
11:40 gonna have a lot of extra dirt available. And so like, even if it's, and it's really deep down there, how do you get that dirt from, you know, miles down the ground up to the surface? I never
11:55 actually thought of that until I'm like picturing it now and it might get make sense 'cause it's, that is a lot of dirt, where does it go? Right Yeah, and so it's a great, great transition into
12:06 kind of why chemicals are used and what they're used for. And so the most common fluid used during drilling is gonna be a drilling mud. And it's called that because it's a concoction of different
12:20 additives that are designed to help extract those, the dirt, you know, out of the ground. But then also, if you think about whenever you're drilling long, really straight, you know, cylinder.
12:33 hole in the ground. If you don't have enough pressure or viscosity inside
12:38 that hole that you just drilled, then it's just going to collapse in on itself because you've got the pressure of the earth trying to keep in on itself. And so as you're drilling, there's a couple
12:49 of things to think about. You got to think about, okay, how do I keep the hole open so that way I can continue drilling? How do I keep the drill bit cool so that way it doesn't overheat itself and
12:58 start to damage itself and I can continue drilling. And the way they do that is with these mugs. And so you've got different types of mugs depending on where you're drilling and the speeds and rates
13:11 that you're going at. And so there's like a water-based mud and there's an oil-based mud. And you can use those types of mugs are dependent on the formation, I guess. So whenever you're drilling
13:26 into the earth, it's got layers to it, right? And there's different types of mineralogies at different layers. And if you're using like a water-based mud, water can come into contact with
13:40 water-sensitive clay material in the formation. And that can cause the earth to expand and make it more difficult for the drill bit to move through there. So you can add like shale stabilizers,
13:55 which basically are chemicals that are designed to block water from entering into clay structure that can be sensitive to water. So you've got clay stabilizers. And
14:11 then we talked about waiting agents and viscosifiers. So again, in order to keep the fluid from compressing in on itself, you have bay rights, which is a barium sulfate. And that is a very dense
14:26 and hard solid scale material, which adds weight to the fluid. So that way it keeps a pressure. formation from kind of collapsing in on itself and
14:39 yeah so I mean those are kind of the basics of what you're trying to accomplish so as that dirt comes up to the surface they have to remove the dirt right from the
14:53 liquid drilling mud and they do that by putting it onto a shaker and then they reuse that drilling mud over and over again so that way they don't
15:03 because if you're using like an oil-based mud for example it can be really expensive to keep replenishing that
15:11 you know some other additives that go into it is as you're drilling you don't want the mud to go into the formation because then that's more that you have to like add on the surface and so you have
15:27 fluid loss like control additives that go into it to prevent the fluid from going.
15:33 where you don't want it to go. And then you've got
15:38 lost circulation material, which again helps keep that material all within the mud. Because if you're using this fluid to extract the solid material out, if you lose that material, then it's just
15:54 more costly to the chemical operators on surface to have to try and replace it. I was just gonna ask, I know you said chemical operator So I'm assuming, this seems like a very big puzzle piece that
16:04 can like ebb and flow and change depending on like how far down you go and where you're at in the process. So I assume there's a chemical guy or woman that's on site, just making sure everyone's
16:16 using the right chemicals at the right time and to add on to that, what is like the mechanism to get it down in the hole? Like you've got four of them. Yeah, so the way it works is the drill bit
16:29 is like hollow. on the inside. And so whenever you're pumping fluid through like the inner part of the drill bit, and then it kind of like comes out and then up around the ends like that. That's
16:43 not what I was expecting. Yeah. So the fluid kind of comes through and then you drill it as it's drilling it. The fluid comes out and helps cool down the bit so that way it doesn't get damaged and
16:54 then circulates up in rounds.
16:57 And then on the surface, you definitely have guys that are mud engineers to where they're.
17:04 I think called like mum loggers to my loggers. Yeah. Are those the guys in the trucks that they have? Are they in a truck that like do you is there a truck pumping all the mud into the hole? Yeah.
17:17 Yeah. So there's a there's a large tank to where you can like see the mud coming out from the ground, you know, and you can there's like these little catacombs you can watch over or like step over
17:29 it and kind of see what it looks like and uh Their job, the mudloggers is to collect the dirt, which is also called cuttings, because it looks like small little pieces of gravel. So they'll
17:42 collect the cuttings at different depths, and then they will take those cuttings and run them on an instrument that's, run them on an instrument that's called an X-ray diffractometer. And what that
17:52 does is it tells you the mineralogical composition of the cuttings and gives you an idea of, okay, this area is a little bit more difficult to drill in because it's got more swelling clay in it or
18:06 something like that. Gotcha. And then once they get to the pay zone, which is where the oil and gas is in the horizontal section, what you're looking for there is kind of like consistency in the
18:19 mineralogy, right? Because the oil and gas, it's in layers and it, you know, it's miles around everywhere. And if you're drilling, ideally if you're drilling a straight horizontal line, the
18:30 mineralogy should be.
18:33 pretty much the same, right? Of course, there's gonna be ebbs and flows and the mineralogy is gonna change, you know, different depths and things like that. But once you identify the target pay
18:42 zone, if you can stay there, all the mineralogy should be pretty much the same. Cool. Yeah. What's next in the process? Yeah. So the, it's,
18:55 that whole, yeah, the whole's drilled. Yeah, so that after the. We're ready to extract, no, we frat.
19:01 We don't frat yet Not yet, no, because, yeah.
19:04 So now after you do the drilling part, you have to remove the drill bits from. Important. Yeah, you have to remove that without, again, causing the hole to collapse in on itself. And then you
19:17 have to insert steel pipe in there. Right. And so again, this process like drilling can take two, three weeks, right? So you've got that process and then the drill rig has to take rig down, go
19:29 to the next location and take another couple of weeks. So then after drilling, you have cementing chemicals that come in. And so whenever you're putting in the
19:41 pipe down hole, you have to add cement in order to put it in, like basically keep it in the middle of the hole. Right. But then also like firmly attached to the formation. So that way it doesn't
19:56 move or unstable during the hydraulic fracturing process. I don't know if you've ever talked to this How big are the holes? Because it,
20:08 I can't decide if I'm picturing something small or I'm picturing something like humongous. Yeah, so I think,
20:16 it's a good question, you know, but like I think the, whenever I think about the hole size, I'm not exactly sure how big the drill bits are that are used. I was gonna say, does it vary based on
20:27 the drill bit, I guess? Yeah, and it also varies I think depending on the company, what their, everybody's got different ideas like what makes the best well. Right. How many, you know, what
20:40 size casing. They're like secret sauce. Yeah. And I think that's, you know, a good frame of reference is after the drilling part is done, they leave like a five and a half inch casing inside
20:54 there, which is like the most common, I think So I would think that the drilling bits size has to be a little bit bigger than that, you know? So we're not talking like, you know, feet. Like a
21:04 big gay bit. Yeah.
21:08 So after cement, after, again, there's a lot of chemistry that goes into cementing. They have, you know, accelerators, which are designed to help
21:21 make the cement hard, like faster And then they have retardants, which is designed to make the cements, you know. set later, depending on temperature pressures and needs of the job. And you've
21:36 got, um, again, waiting agents to try and help make sure that the cement is at the right weights and density. So then once you have everything kind of cemented in the hole is the cement filling up
21:51 the entire hole, like there's not casing in here yet or anything. It's. So the cement actually goes through the casing. So, okay. Yeah. So like, again, similar to the drilling piece,
22:04 whenever fluid is going, like through the drill bit and then coming outside. So the cement is going down and out to make that cement wall outside of the casing. Correct. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah.
22:17 So, um, and then up on closer to the surface like we're water tables. You know, that's that's a big concern. I guess that yeah people have about I think the water is contaminated They think their
22:29 water is getting contaminated, right? And so there's a lot of steps that go in during that process to where like in the areas to where like water tables are You know in the first couple thousand
22:39 feet or so there's extra layers of cements that goes there and there's extra layers of Pipe that goes there or into further protect it So it's got like a couple fail-safes there to help prevent any
22:53 fluid from leaking in that area I feel like we need to like replay that in the episode 800 times right that anyone listening knows that we're not Trying to poison everyone's water. Yeah, exactly. I
23:07 mean, that's uh, you know chemicals just They get a bad rap because they they can be dangerous, but again, we're not out here trying to hurt people With chemistry. We're trying to solve problems
23:20 for sure. One thing and call on top is when we first I think
23:27 it was probably maybe even like a year ago. We sat in front of a whiteboard and this is how the podcast was kind of born. He gave us this like very broad energy 101. And he mentioned something
23:33 about, you know, if you think about it, especially from that standpoint of
23:39 leaking out of the pipes and the water and stuff, it's, there's so much money that goes into all of these productions and drilling that these companies can't afford to lose it. So they're taking
23:51 every precaution to make sure that it's like safe, there are no leaks, that there are no gaps in that safety, I would assume. Yeah, yeah, for sure. 'Cause - They're incentivized to keep it.
24:05 Yeah. To keep it inside the hole. Yes. Because they don't wanna, yeah, let's say money. Yeah.
24:11 So yeah, there's a bunch of additives that go into the cementing process and all that kind of happens, obviously before frack
24:21 kind of comes along And then once you have the.
24:24 Pipe sets and drilling has moved off the location and you're ready to start actually stimulating the well. There's a bunch of chemicals that go into that process as well. So I like to think about
24:37 again what are we what are we trying to accomplish? Why are they doing it? And how are they doing it? And so what are you trying to accomplish is you're trying to get as much oil and gas out of the
24:48 ground as possible. How do they do that? They do that by injecting a bunch of water and sand into the formation and the idea is that sand is a bunch of spherical particles that's even whenever you
25:04 compress them together there's still space in between them to where fluid can flow through and then go through those into the
25:14 casing and then produce such a surface. And so on the frackside now we're talking about chemicals in much larger quantity.
25:24 On the drilling side, you're talking about a couple hundred barrels of drilling mud that's used in order to do that. And then on the frackside, we're talking a couple million gallons of fluid that
25:39 you would need in order to treat the well. And 98 of the chemicals that are used in stimulating a well is just water and sand And those are the two that make up 98. The other two percent are going
25:57 to be other additives that are designed to help achieve the goal of extracting more oil and gas. And so again, if you think about very basic, what are we doing here? You've got a hole here that
26:10 has cement and it's got metal pipe and you're trying to move sand from the surface into a horizontal section.
26:23 If you have a water bottle like this and you just put sand into it, it's just gonna fall straight to the bottom and that's not good for whenever you're trying to put it into a formation as a miles
26:35 away. And so what do they do? They add like thickening agents or viscosifiers to help keep that prop it or the sands suspended in solution. So that way it doesn't cause a major blockage in settle
26:52 because if that happens, that's called a screen out. And that is really, really bad to occur that on a frack location because that means that you have to shut down everything and figure out how to
27:06 remove that sand so that way you can continue pumping fluid. So someone's getting in trouble. Right. Someone's getting in trouble. How do you know if you have that blockage? So you've got a bunch
27:18 of engineers and like company man That is, the company man is. on location and in charge of everything that's kind of going out there. And inside the data van, they're watching pressure charts to
27:33 look at, okay, what's the treating pressure look like? And you can imagine if you have a hole that is blocked, you try and pump through it, you're gonna see pressure spike like crazy. And so you
27:46 can see a large pressure increase whenever you see a blockage like that, you can kind of start to see it. Occur even before it actually starts occurring. So that's where the experience of a good
27:59 company man who's seen a lot of those charts, you know, comes into play and they can try and prevent that from happening by either decreasing the sand amount that they need at the time or increasing
28:11 the amount of viscosifier that they're using or something like that.
28:15 Who makes that call the company man or do the like mud engineers know like okay, pressure, the company man's like, hey, something's going on. Does the mud engineer figure out? Or like you said,
28:28 the company man. It would be the company man. Yeah. Because like if you, if you think about, so this is, again, like I'm still learning and everything new in, in the industry, what I didn't
28:41 realize until a couple of years ago is that the company man actually works like, is a consultant basically for the operator. Um, so the operator could be, you know, conoco, Chevron or somebody
28:52 like that. And they hire a representative that is there on location to make sure that the job designs that, you know, conoco or Chevron, like, uh, want executed or executed. Yeah. And then
29:06 everybody else out on location is with a different service company that provides some other type of service. Um, and so really at the end of the day, the company man is the one who is responsible
29:18 for all the calls. All operations, yeah, it's a lot of pressure. Yeah, I know when Colin used to work on the rig, if anything would ever happen where the pressure spiked, he's like, it's gonna
29:31 be a long night of fishing out whatever it is. There's so much nuance that goes into it. Yeah, yeah. So after,
29:42 so again, that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to just get sand into a water medium in a water medium to go into these fractures that you wanna create miles down in the hole. So if you
29:57 just use water and sand though, there's gonna be a lot of problems that occur if you don't add some other additives to it. And so some of like one of the most important ones that needs to be added
30:10 to it is called a biocide. And a biocide is used in all different kinds of industries It's used in laundry. detergents, households, industrial applications to get rid of harmful bacteria and
30:25 microorganisms there. And the reason you need to get rid of those in a oil field setting is because those microbes and bacteria can cause corrosion. And so corrosion is really bad obviously for
30:42 steel pipe because it creates holes in places where you don't want holes to be and can cause fluid leak off and casing degradation and things like that. So biocide, that is one that I would say out
30:60 of like all the chemicals that are used on a frack location, that one is the most dangerous because it stands for like life kill, you know?
31:12 One of my questions was kind of you, Which of these chemicals can kill you? Yeah, so I mean, it's, job is literally to kill bacteria. And, but so is something like amoxicillin, right? Which
31:28 is a antibiotic, which is designed to kill those things. And if you use it in the right quantities in the right dosages, it's not going to kill you, right? So you could say that's like bleach is
31:42 again, another one, but we all use it in our homes to clean stuff It's not like we're drinking it or washing our hands, and everything like that. So that's where chemical safety and knowledge and
31:54 awareness comes into play. Yeah, I have a question about the additives. Are
32:00 they pretty, that 2 of additives that you have to use? Are they pretty standard across the board? Or does every operator,
32:08 they have a secret recipe that they don't like to share? Or is it standard, this is what everyone uses? Yeah, so the industry kind of goes into. waves of what is kind of popular at the moment I
32:22 think and same thing with chemicals you know you can tell really good stories with different chemicals right like if you think about this just being a bottle of water it doesn't seem that exciting you
32:32 know but if you say like hey I got this bottle of water from the alpine you know mountains and it's you know Yeti's used to drinking
32:42 and yeah it's the best water ever it tastes the grace like it's a story that you have to tell in order to sell this liquid right and as far as chemical theory in hydraulic fracturing goes like it has
32:54 changed ever since I kind of first started yeah and so engineers used to have this idea that whenever you were creating fractures you wanted this really like bimodal fracture wing is kind of what they
33:08 called it or you have like two giant fractures that are filled with propane sand and That is, the best way to do that is with ultra high viscosity. So, you want super thick, high viscous fluids
33:22 that can generate these large fractures. And so, what they would use at those times is like a cross-link system, is what the generic term was kind of called. And a cross-link system consists of
33:38 multiple additives, including one like galar, galar or cellulose gum, which are naturally derived derivatives of like bean plants and things like that. Guars actually use a lot in food for
33:56 viscosifying, things like ice cream or yogurt or things like that. So, you add this guar to the fluid to help increase the viscosity just by a little bit. And then the unique property about guar
34:10 is that you can increase the pH of that fluid So you need a pH adjuster, that's another chemical that gets added to it. And once you get up to a pH of around 10 or 11-ish or so, then the guar
34:23 becomes available for crosslinking. And what it crosslinks with is a common known chemistry is like borate. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so borate is a common cleaning and if that's used borax, just
34:40 literally borax can be used. And whenever you add the borax or the borate to the guar at that high pH, it gets a cross links. And basically what that means is it gets ultra thick. So without the
34:54 cross linkers, we're talking about in terms of cine poise, you know, maybe five, 10 cine poise, it's a unit of measurement for viscosity. And then whenever you add the cross linkers, it gets up
35:05 to thousands of cine poise. Gotcha. Super thick, you can hold it and mold it in your hands It's so thick, they actually used to do a lip test out on locations, kind of what they would do. it.
35:18 So they get a sample of the chemical, they put it into a cup like this, and a good lip test is where you can kind of like tilt the bottle like that, but then the fluid will come back up into the
35:30 bottle. Gotcha. So it'll like kind of do that. And because it's got some elasticity to it, and that used to be kind of the ideal frack fluid of choice. But if you think about that on a frack
35:44 location, it's difficult because you have to have hydration units, which are used to basically hydrate that guar material. You have to have a high pH adjuster, and then you have to have a cross
35:57 linker in order to get that. And then depending on, you know, temperature conditions, you could add thermal stabilizers to it, oxygen scavengers or whatever
36:10 Once I started, that was kind of like back in, you know, 2011 cross link systems were kind of all the rage. And then now this is. uh, chemical and operator industry has kind of focused more on
36:22 slick water state. And the difference between that is you're using a, uh, less chemicals in order to try and do all the same things that a, uh, viscosified crosslink system would do. And part of
36:37 that transition had to do with how do we change the story of. How a good fraction model looks like, right? So instead of having like two really large fractures, the idea was, okay, what if we
36:52 can use these chemicals to create a really complex fracture network to where it's like, if you, uh, a bunch of just cracks that are, um, really small, but all connected and we fill all that up
37:08 with propants. So that way we can maximize surface area exposure And that turns out to be a little bit better way of. reducing more oil and gas without increasing costs too much, and it also
37:24 reduces operational simplicity, because you can do those things with just one chemical, which is a friction reducer.
37:33 So, a friction reducer, the primary chemistry used in that is called polyacrylamide, and basically what it is, it's a super long polymer chain, which is designed to do a couple of things. So,
37:47 it can make it easier to pump fluid at higher rates, and it also helps to spin the propins in the fluid so that way it can get put into the right spots in the formation. So, slick water is
38:01 obviously a lot easier than a cross-sneok system because you don't have to worry about pH adjustment, you don't have to worry about necessarily hydrating it, you don't have to worry about adding
38:10 another additive to it. It's just kind of like one chemical that kind of does all those things And one step shot. one-stop shop. Yeah. So and it's a lot cheaper. So I'm sure they love that. They
38:24 love that. Yeah. So I would say a majority of unconventional plug-and-perf frag jobs in the US are slick water applications now. Nice. Yeah. So I know we talked with this before we started
38:36 recording. Obviously kind of the hot topic across the industry is, you know, going more clean, more green, lower emissions, carbon, all that good stuff. Does that translate to the chemical
38:50 side? Yeah. So again, polyacrylamide, for example, is a very safe chemistry. It's used in water treatments like wastewater from the city. I've been through water treatment plans to where you
39:05 treat the water with the chemical and they can be used to flocculate out different solid material and then it's disposed of. in a creek or a river or something like that. So it's safe. There's
39:21 different types of polyacrylamide that can be used that's like, for example, diapers. The absorbent material that's in diapers is
39:33 polyacrylamide. So of course with everything, we want to provide chemicals
39:49 that
39:55 are safe, but also effective for people to use. And so what are some people doing? I see a lot of conversations talking about green chemistry on the surfactant side. So another additive that is
39:59 part of that 2 are surfactants or microemulsions or nanoparticles. And the idea there is that if you have a, let's just think about a dish, a dirty dish, a surfactant is just like dawn dish soap,
40:11 right?
40:13 The surfactant is any chemical that lowers the surface tension. of water, basically in this case.
40:22 It makes it easier to remove dirt and oil and things. And the way I think about surfactants, like from a chemical perspective is you've got, it's a really, it's a long chain. So just think about
40:37 kind of like a long rod. And then one side of it is water loving, and the other side is like water-hating, okay? And so one side of it that loves water is going to kind of like have a higher
40:50 affinity towards moving towards the water. And then the other side that's water-hating is going to go more towards the fats, the oils, the greases, and the soils and stuff like that. So that way
41:03 whenever you have an excess of water coming out of your sink or whatever, that water flows and basically kind of pulls the dirt off of the dishes and stuff that you're using Same thing with oil and
41:16 gas. is that if you use a surfactants, it can help remove more oil and gas because you're binding the surfactant kind of with the oil, but then producing it back with the water and stuff. So it's
41:32 an effective chemistry to help produce more.
41:37 And there's different types of surfactants that can have different environmental impacts depending on how they're disposed of So
41:48 there's trillions of different types of surfactants and different surfactant combinations out there. Some surfactants you can mix with another and it'll actually make cause-like synergies and make
41:60 the most perform better. But again, some of them, if you were to use them on a wastewater or industrial application and were to be disposed of into a lake or a stream or something like that, It
42:14 could have negative impacts like on the fish. or that a lot of life or something like that. So there are certain chemistries that aren't used because of the environmental effects that it could cause.
42:29 And there's a lot of chemical companies out there that are trying to figure out, okay, how can we create like bio-based surfactants or bio surfactants to where they'll take like a yeast culture and
42:43 then use it to ferment and it'll create a surfactant that is 100 biodegradable after that. Oh, cool. So if you can, any time that you're looking for a chemical solution that is biodegradable,
43:01 that's kind of like what the
43:04 best case scenario is. But biodegradation usually means that the product is a little bit more expensive and it may not be as effective, so. That's part of the challenge of figuring out, okay,
43:19 what do we know works conventionally? And then how do we replace it with something that is safer, greener, better for the environment? It seems like a lot, but we've talked about today, at least
43:32 what I'm taking away is, I think people probably don't realize that a lot of the chemicals that go into producing oil and gas are also in a lot of our like daily household products. Thanks. Thank
43:45 you, really That they're all crossing over. So it's, in theory, we're not really using anything that's some crazy, futuristic thing that if anyone like inhales that you're gonna die. It's very,
43:58 it seems very basic. Yeah. It is basic because you don't want to make it too complicated, simplicity, the easier, more efficient things are, better it's gonna be for everybody.
44:13 especially on the chemical side like there's, there's a certain chemicals that you can't use at all. Right. For example, on the frackside, BTEX is a common acronym that's used to say we don't
44:24 want, or we need BTEX free chemicals, which is like benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene. And those are all, you know, pretty nasty solvents that come from hydrocarbons.
44:37 But you don't want them like in the water because they're potential carcinogens and can cause cancer and things like that. Yeah.
44:48 So, safety first, always, is a name of the game with chemicals. Yeah. Love it, I feel like that's a good, like wrap up. Safety first, yeah. I'm gonna tell a quick story. I was just looking
45:01 up, I was, 'cause I know my dad, so my dad worked at Halliburton for 40 years. Okay. He was actually a biochemical engineer, I believe And years ago, like 2003 or something. He won some type
45:14 of award at Halliburton where they created the technology of fracture fluid or something along those lines. I don't know, to this day, when I read it, I'm like, I don't know what that means.
45:25 That means that means. But as you're talking, I'm like, Wait, I think I could go back and read that now and actually make sense of like what he did. So he has early onset dementia, so I'm not
45:37 able to go and talk to him and be like, What did you do? So
45:42 now that I'm interested in what he did, he can't tell me. So I'm always like looking to where I can make sense of that, make connections with what he did and try to understand it. But yeah, I
45:55 think this whole conversation, I'm like, Wow, I understand what my dad did.
46:03 You know, I spent most of my career focusing on the frackside and there's a lot more considerations to go into it. Like, you know, I got to talk about what Fluid does because we're a chemical
46:19 company that also provides chemicals kind of used for for act drilling production.
46:25 After the what a big chemical that's used is hydrochloric acid. Yeah. And so if you think about hydrochloric acid, just in general, I think most people in the public will think like ACL is really
46:37 bad. You don't want to touch it. And that's true. I mean, it is a it's a, you know, corrosive chemical that if you were to put your hand into it, it would really hurt. It would start purring
46:49 you.
46:51 And if you were to try and inhale, some of the vapors associated with that, you would cause, you know, permanent lung damage and things. So there are some on sites, engineering controls that
47:06 need to be taken into consideration, or it's a properly managed, the safe use of that chemical. Um, but then also it's important to realize that like hydrochloric acid is something that our body
47:18 naturally like makes in our stomach, you know, it's the breakdown like everything that we eat. Yeah, that's the acid that breaks down, you know, everything that we eat. Um, so that, that's
47:31 important to understand like, um, as far as like toxicity and danger everything, it's all about, you know, what dosage and how do you take it in moderation I mean, if you drink enough water,
47:43 right? Like you could die drinking too much water, you know, that just happened. Yeah, it did. Like a mom vacation or something. Mommy drank like four bottles of water and like 10, something
47:55 crazy. Um, and yeah, and then she ended up passing away. Water toxicity or yeah. Yeah, I've heard of that. It's crazy. First time I heard about it was that like a frat, like hazing thing,
48:09 like Instead of making them drinking a bunch of beer, they're like, We're just going to make you drink water, because that's safe. Right? It's not. Someone died. Yeah, someone died. Oh my
48:18 gosh. That's that. That's actually terrifying. Yeah. So when you think about it, dihydrogen monoxide is a very dangerous chemical because at really high temperatures, it can burn you, right,
48:28 and at really low temperatures, it can burn you, right? Yeah. And
48:32 it's funny when you say it like in a chemical name, how it just sounds more dangerous. Right. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah It is called myriatic acid when you buy it on the shelf at like Home Depot or
48:41 something. You can buy it
48:48 at the store and it's commonly used as like a concrete cleaner or concrete etch or something like that. Because what hydrochloric acid is really good at is dissolving carbonate-based materials. And
49:02 so carbonate-based materials are very common in the mineralogy that is.
49:09 ideal for extracting oil and gas. And so in some regions, like up in North Dakota, the formations that they're targeting can be like 70, 80, 90 carbonate material, which means that it's almost
49:23 completely soluble in acid. But then in some regions, you don't have any carbonate material. And so like they don't use acid there, you don't need it. Yeah. But what it's used for during the
49:34 frack process is it's typically one of the first chemicals to be pumped after the plug has been set and they've perforated, wire line kind of pulls out. They'll run hydrochloric acid to help
49:49 dissolve some of that material. So that way it's easier to pump more fluid into the formation. And so on the surface, again, like you have to have the hydrochloric acid in a closed container,
50:04 because otherwise the fumes can cause, you know, You don't want to be around that on a frack location. You'll have to, like if there's ever a spill or anything like that on a location, um, you
50:16 have to evacuate the area and, uh, wait for someone to clean it up and it has Matt has Matt, yeah, it's a hazardous material for sure. Um, so what my company did is we only focus on like
50:32 modifying hydrochloric acid to make it actually a safer chemistry And so I should have brought some with me today, but this are hydrochloric acid. We call it HCR, which is hydrochloric replacement.
50:44 You can put your hand into it and it won't burn you, uh, so it's safer to use on your skin and, um, it's non-regulated for transportation in the US. So you're removing a hazardous chemical from
50:57 location, but then, um, the benefit of like not just the chemistry side
51:07 of it Again, like with with all chemicals If it's green, great, but not everybody's willing to pay for that, right? So it has to provide some other value to them. And the value that we found is
51:20 that you can run this product with Wireline as it's going down whole because it is so non-corrosive to things like your skin and metal. And then we've got a corrosion inhibitor package that gets
51:36 added to that to make it safe on the Wireline And just by changing the process in which the chemical is used, you're able to save a significant amount of time during these jobs. That's true. And oh,
51:50 by the way, it's green,
51:53 it's safe. Yeah, so it's out there saving the money by getting it done faster. Yeah, so that's a great kind of success story that I've seen of chemicals being used to kind of make things safer out
52:10 on location, you know, obviously removing a hazardous material is really nice.
52:16 So yeah, so on the frackside you've got, you know, acid, you've got viscosifiers, you've got
52:22 biocides. I feel like we should include a little like glossary. Right.
52:30 Yeah, there's scale inhibitors, there's clay control,
52:36 you know, corrosion inhibitors I mean, like there's all the different types of chemicals that go into it. And this is only up until fracking. That's just still a frack part, yeah. Jeez, I feel
52:47 like we need a part two for like you fracked. Now, here comes part two of all the other chemicals. Yeah, so we haven't got to a midstream yet, right? And there's the midstream and the downstream
52:59 chemicals that are used for that and then production. So after you simulate the well, after everything has.
53:09 you know, a propant has been put where it needs to go, then you're ready to start extracting the oil and gas. The first thing that comes out is kind of all that water that you just put down there.
53:19 And so the question is, how do we treat that water? Or what do we do with it? Can we recycle it? Can we reuse it? Because water, depending on where you're at, is a precious commodity that needs
53:32 to be
53:34 recycled and reused as many times as possible So that way you're not consuming, you know, city resources or draining more water from lakes and properties. And there are whole entire companies that
53:45 just do. Water. Is that, this might be a really stupid question. Is that separate from the water that's produced from the well?
53:55 So there, there is two separate waters. Yeah, so you've got like your injection fluid, which is, you know, the water that you take from the surface in order to put the sand down hole but then
54:06 there's also water. that has been trapped with that oil and gas material down in the earth for millions of years. And some of that is going to start coming back up to the surface and that water that
54:19 has been trapped underneath the ground for millions of years is has had a lot of time to react with the formation and dissolve as much salts and minerals and stuff into a solution that over millions
54:37 of years, right? So you can have,
54:41 I guess, just for like a frame of reference, you can have like drinking water if you were to run an analysis on this and look at how much calcium, magnesium, potassium, chloride, you know, all
54:53 that kind of stuff is in there and you were to add it all up, you would say that's, okay, drinking water has maybe like 100 PPM of total dissolved solids or something like that.
55:08 PPM stands for parts per million. And total dissolved solids is a unit of measurement to identify how much stuff is in water. Whenever a produced water comes back, again, depending on which
55:22 formation you're in and what levels and depths you're at, it can come back at anywhere from like 20, 000 TDS to like 200, 000 TDS. And 200, 000 TDS, which that basically means that the water is
55:38 20 dissolved solid material and then the rest of the 80 is actual water. And 'cause if
55:46 you think about parts per million, 200, 000 divided by a million, that's 20. And
55:53 remember all that has been trapped down there at a certain temperature and pressure for a long period of time. So it's a very like stable solution. And then once you start to produce that water back
56:05 up to the surface, and changes in pressure and temperature that cause the solubility of those salts to change. And so that's whenever as you're flowing a fluid back, if it starts to precipitate out
56:20 solids, which is called scale, that's a problem. So how do you remove the scale is one, how do you prevent the scale from happening is another chemical, like these are all solutions that can be
56:37 worked with chemical solutions. There are problems that can be addressed with chemical solutions. Yeah, I feel like there's a chemical solution for everything. Yeah.
56:49 Well, as a chemist, I've done a good job. Yeah.
56:54 Chemicals for the win. Yeah, chemicals for the win. Should we move into rapid fire questions? Yes. So we wrap up each episode with three rapid fire questions. Okay.
57:05 Take it away and do the honors.
57:08 What is the biggest misconception in energy?
57:13 Biggest misconception in energy. So since today was kind of like about chemicals in energy, I guess I wanna say, speak directly to the chemical side of it, is that,
57:27 yes, safety does need to be a big important factor of when you're using chemicals, because some of them are dangerous, but with proper engineering controls and knowledge of what you're working with,
57:45 chemicals are relatively safe. You know, we're not, again, we're not trying to put anybody in a situation to where they would feel uncomfortable being around a chemical to where they could
57:57 potentially take that back home to their kids. And I think that that's probably the biggest misconceptions Good one. about the chemical side in general. Like there are, there's a lot of activist
58:09 groups out there that think that
58:14 chemicals, you know, being transported through a residential neighborhood or something like that is bad. And the types of chemicals that are transported in those trucks, like people are really
58:24 concerned about that. So I think there is a valid
58:28 concern for at least asking the question of like, Hey, absolutely, let's, I'd like to understand what's in it. And so the beautiful thing about helping educate the public on what type of
58:41 chemicals exist. There is a website called frack focus that is basically after every single frack job is completed, all of the chemicals and the quantities and the amounts that are used during that
58:56 job have to be disclosed to this publicly available organization. And so you can go in the process. You know, after the job's done, it takes probably about like three months or so for a company to
59:11 post those results on there. But you can look up any operator anywhere in the US and go to that website and say, okay, I want to know what was used on this well at this location and it'll pull up a
59:24 report for you that'll tell you we use this much water, we use this much sand, we use this much bio side, this much surfactant or whatever. And that's in order to help educate the public on the
59:35 chemicals. That's awesome. It is, that's really cool. We're gonna have to check that out.
59:40 Next question, what, I just lost it, why should we care? Oh, why should people care about energy? Why should people care about energy? So I think
59:54 whenever you think about why should we care, this is one of those questions to where I think like, Okay, what would happen if you didn't care? And of course, if we didn't care where our energy
1:00:09 came from, we'd be living in, you know, the wilderness, trying to burn trees in order to keep us warm at night and things like that. So I think what that question makes me kind of think of alone,
1:00:25 the TV show on Netflix, it's where you've got those people that are,
1:00:30 I mean, they're roughing it out in the wilderness and they're survival experts and even with them being survival experts,
1:00:39 you can see how incredibly difficult it is to survive without energy. And these people are being paid or they're hoping that they can get paid in order for doing that. But there are, listen to one
1:00:56 of those last podcasts and eight billion people in the world and one billion people don't have access to reliable energy. And you know, those people that don't have access to reliable energy,
1:01:11 they're not on a reality team where they have the opportunity to win half a million dollars, right? Yeah, that's their lives. And
1:01:21 reliable energy is, you know, of course, key to improve the quality of life. And I think that's something a lot of people don't understand. Absolutely.
1:01:36 What
1:01:39 is your most embarrassing story? Oh, and your work work related. Yeah. Okay, that's okay.
1:01:50 Let's keep it professional. So
1:01:54 early, whenever I moved into Houston with this chemical company, I was
1:02:03 I was the guy who like whenever I was interviewing for a job They would say like what do you want to do? And I'd say like I want your job, you know, like I'd be like I want to be like CEO I want to
1:02:14 be running this place, you know, and literally did I know like how ignorant that sound Like I just I didn't know what that mints, so I feel pretty embarrassed about like how many times I said
1:02:27 Someone eventually say something like why did you say you like what was the reaction the reaction was just Okay, cool like I like the gumption, you know, yeah, and I was everyone was like super
1:02:38 nice and kind about to your face to my face
1:02:43 There was so what made me stop to and that is a great question because there was you know, I'd been working in the industry for six seven years issue or so and There were some interns that we were
1:02:57 looking at hiring at our company and one of them I wasn't part of the, it's funny. I wasn't part of like the interview, you know, for the intern or whatever, but my boss actually called me and
1:03:09 said, Hey, I want you to come in and listen to this guy. See what you think. And him and I had very similar personalities, I guess, as far as you being go-getter. You and the intern? Me and
1:03:19 the intern, sorry. Me and the intern had similar personalities to where he walked in and said, I want to be CEO. You know? And I was like, Oh my God, he sounds so stupid
1:03:31 And I have said that for so many times.
1:03:35 And so, I guess
1:03:38 that's probably my most embarrassing story that I can - And that's like an ongoing - Mm-hmm. It's like they're that one - You think about it on the plate, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I just kept doing
1:03:48 it. But I think what makes it even more embarrassing is I didn't realize it was embarrassing. Yeah, until you heard someone else say that. Yeah, it was just like, Oh, it sounds
1:03:58 like - Did the intern get hired? He did. Oh, that worked. Yeah, and it worked out, so. I wonder if he's come to that realization yet. I don't know. I don't know if he listens to this podcast.
1:04:12 He will know. Yeah, 'cause I didn't want him to know. Oh, shit, that was neat. Yeah. Yeah. That was a good one. Yeah, well, Kai, thank you so much for joining us. How was your first
1:04:22 podcast experience? It was great, I feel like I talked a lot more and didn't even get to talk about all the things I thought I was going to talk about, but - The time was quick. I feel like that
1:04:32 happens more often than not. Even when we go into episodes thinking it's fairly simple and it'll be a short one, they always end up being super long and we're like, we need to start so much detail.
1:04:42 We'll have to
1:04:44 have you on for a part two. No, I would really appreciate that. I look forward to it and I appreciate what you guys are doing trying to increase energy IQ awareness, which I think is super
1:04:57 valuable because. I didn't have these types of resources whenever I was kind of starting out. And I think that with the availability of podcasts and videos and technology, um, chat, GBT, yeah,
1:05:10 yeah, you can talk about AI and chemicals, right? And like, how does being used. There's a chemicals in AI. Oh, yeah. Oh shit. Yeah. Wait, can we get a
1:05:21 chemical person on our AI panel? What views? That sounds really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Um, very interesting stuff there Like, uh, meta Facebook just released a program to where they can
1:05:33 basically help develop new catalysts for different types of reactions in a matter of seconds using AI, whereas it would take a lab person months of testing in order to try and get those results. And
1:05:48 so it's pretty amazing what, uh, wow, AI is doing kind of just for everything. Yeah. Yeah. I think it been brought up in like every podcast really
1:06:00 has any updates for our listeners.
1:06:04 Fuse our energy debt conference is coming up in Houston. It's October 30th and 31st. Check out our website, digitalalcatterscom for more info, like and subscribe as always. That's all we got.
1:06:20 Where can people find you if they want to learn more about chemicals? Yeah, sure. So we're fluid or all the above. All the above. Yeah. So obviously I, the only social media that I really use
1:06:32 is LinkedIn. Cool. So I have a presence on there. Feel free to shoot me a message. And then fluidenergygroupcom
1:06:41 is our website of the company. Cool. Awesome. Well, thank you. Thank you. Bye.
