DEVELOPMENT AND APPLICATION OF GREEN ENZYME BREAKER TECHNOLOGIES IN HYDRAULIC FRACTURING

摘要

Hydraulic fracturing has been in practice in the oil and gas industry for over 65 years and has been used in more than one million wells to obtain 700 billion barrels of oil and 600 trillion feet of natural gas. Recently, horizontal fracturing has been used as a major breakthrough technology in natural gas recovery from shale drilling. Currently, about 25% of U.S. gas supplies are from shale. Hydraulic fracturing is increasingly becoming regulated by various state and federal environmental agencies while market forces are also pushing development toward greener technologies. Major oil industry service companies like Baker Hughes, Halliburton, Schlumberger and Weatherford have begun to focus their efforts to develop and implement environmentally friendly and sustainable green technologies. Baker Hughes is at the forefront of biotechnology in the oil services industry and has developed several enzymes that break the viscosity of cross-linked polymers used in hydraulic fracturing applications.