Natural Gas byproduct from Oil Drilling?
Natural Gas often comes as a byproduct when drilling for Oil. Does this mean that for an oil company to increase their gas production also means to increase their oil production?
in other words, its not possible to increase (by a lot) their gas production unless they also drill for more oil?
thank you for your answer.
April 9th, 2010 at 5:46 pm
Not really. There are plenty of fields that just produce natural gas without oil. For example, the newly producing shale fields are gas only, just research "Marcellus Shale". Many of these new NG sources are discovered by new advances in detection technology and can be accessed by directional drilling. The directional drilling allows the well to turn from the vertical to the horizontal, so more gas can be obtained per well.
April 9th, 2010 at 5:46 pm
If you mean petroleum, then naturally they will have to drill for more oil, considering that it is a refined from oil. natural gas, on the other, can come from sources other than fossil fuels.
April 9th, 2010 at 5:46 pm
It is true that most oil production has associated natural gas with it but there are also many areas where only natural gas is found.
The oil and gas companies and pipeline companies use this combination to balance the supply of natural gas with the demand. They use the gas associated with oil production as the base supply and adjust the natural gas from natural gas fields to take the day to day and season to season swings in demand.