Hey, this was kinda fun; let's try it again, real soon.

As we've reported before, today marks the beginning of mandatory reporting of the components of fluid used in hydraulic fracturing of oil and gas wells drilled in Texas. A careful reading of the regulations indicates that you shouldn't hold your breath to see what's going into that well that's planned for your back yard. Even if it's permitted today, the actual reporting of frac fluid isn't required until the well completion report is filed with the State; an operator has up to 90 days following the drilling of a well to file a completion report. However, the so-called Chemical Disclosure Registry form must be completed and uploaded to www.fracfocus.org at the same time the completion report is filed -- although there's nothing preventing companies from doing it sooner.

The regulations allow a company to claim that the identity and/or proportion of frac fluid ingredients is a "trade secret" and is therefore exempt from detailed reporting. Even then, the regs specify that "the chemical family or other similar description associated with such chemical ingredient must be provided." And regardless of trade secret status, the identity and proportions of all ingredients must be disclosed to "any health professional or emergency responder who needs the information for diagnostic, treatment or other emergency response purposes."

At the same time, land surface owners where the well is drilled, as well as landowners adjacent to that location, can challenge the trade secret designation by completing and submitting certain information (the regs suggest, but don't require, this format [PDF]). Interestingly, you don't have to explain why you want to make the challenge, and you have up to 24 months after the date the well completion report is filed to submit a challenge. 

Now, my reading of this section of the regulations is that if the office of the Texas Attorney General determines that the withheld information is not entitled to trade secret status, the information must be disclosed...but only to the requestor who challenged the status. This would seem to be a rather large loophole; there's no provision for a retroactive public disclosure on fracfocus.org.

I suspect that those companies who historically have played fast and loose with regulations (you know who you are...and many of us also know who you are) will do the same with this one. The majority will shoot for full compliance. But there may be an interesting dynamic involved, because the portion of the regs dealing with trade secrecy  seems to give equal status to "a supplier, service company, or operator," and each of these participants in the process might have different objectives and agendas.

If you squint just right, this looks like either a lightning bolt or a constellation.

You know what? The un-retouched image is actually quite a bit more impressive:

I know that some of you have seen this scene from ground-level. It's an aerial look at the Forest Creek Capricorn Ridge (thanks, Gregg!) wind farm just north of Sterling City, Texas. The white lines and dots are the turbine locations and service roads, but what really caught my eye when I saw them on Google Earth are the fractal patterns of the terrain, showing how it's been etched over the eons by natural forces. Simply breathtaking, it is.

Speaking of wind, I ran across the following video on a blog called Brand 66, and I was immediately captured by the sheer whimsical genius. 

How cool would it be to set an army of these inventions loose on the West Texas plains, to "graze" and wander at will?

The band was from Abilene, and consisted of five young men, the oldest of which was perhaps 25. Through the course of the evening, they did covers of musicians as diverse as Johnny Cash, Dwight Yoakam, and Johnny Paycheck. While they didn't necessarily improve on the originals, they also didn't embarrass themselves or discredit the sources, and a good time was had by all.

But back to the conversation with friends. One of them recalled a time "about thirty years ago" when she attended a tractor pull at the Ector County Coliseum. During intermission, she said a young band hauled their gear into the middle of the track, and started playing. The sound was bad - too soft to be heard over the well-oiled tractor crowd - and a few people started booing. 

Someone found the right switch and the music got loud enough to be heard, and someone yelled out, "hey, ya'll quiet down...that feller's pretty good!" The youthful band managed to capture the crowd's attention and hold it for a couple of songs, which is all the time they were given, and they even got a good ovation when they finished. Without fanfare, they dragged their equipment across the dirt and out of the Coliseum. 

My friend had a big grin on her face as she revealed that she had been fortunate enough to be present at one of the earliest public appearances of a guy who turned out to be a fairly successful country musician. You might recognize the name: George Strait.

George has gone on to make music history, recording more #1 songs (58) than any artist in history, in any genre, and he's showing no signs of slowing down. His most recent album, Here For A Good Time, is a showcase of his sometimes under-appreciated range of styles. Strait manages to keep country tradition alive without slipping into by-the-numbers stereotype. I wouldn't go so far to say that he's the anti-Jason-Aldean, but if you're tired of the over-produced pop-oriented Nashville sound, here's your Strait, man.

I keep getting asked when we're going to post some video of our dancing. Well, the time has come. Kinda.

Incidentally, this particular lesson involved fifteen different steps plus variations. Feel free to watch again and try to count them.

The debate about the merits and hazards of hydraulic fracturing of oil and gas wells will likely never subside, as its opponents argue that the process causes everything from fiery faucets to endless earthquakes, and its proponents claim you can drink frac fluid without suffering ill effects other than an unnatural affinity for the Houston Texans. 

But at least one argument against the process is gaining validity, and that's the undeniable fact that fracing takes a heckuva lot of water, and water is a precious commodity that's growing painfully scarce in many parts of the country. The typical frac job uses tens of thousands of gallons of fresh water (and can require more than a million gallons), and much of that is rendered non potable by the process.

Perhaps it's time for oil and gas companies to take a serious look at using liquified petroleum gas (LPG) as a replacement for water. LPG is generally a mixture of propane and butane. I ran across this article on the Unconventional Oil & Gas Center website that describes the process and a Canadian company, GasFrac Energy Services, Inc, that specializes in LPG frac technology.

Once you get past the psychological impact of thinking about pumping a highly flammable mixture under unimaginable pressures into the ground (GasFrac contends that the process is actually quite safe, although they probably make that claim from deep inside a bunker in an undisclosed location), the benefits are obvious. You're using a hydrocarbon to entice other hydrocarbons to flee their rocky bonds while eliminating not only the need for copious amounts of water, but also for CO2 which is commonly used to "energize" the frac fluid. The frac fluid becomes a part of your revenue stream as it's produced with the reservoir oil and gas, rather than being an expensive disposal problem.

Some companies will be better positioned than others to take advantage of this technology. For example, those with gas plants in the area of the drilling operations could, in theory, produce the LPG used for fracing, and then reprocess the produced liquids stream.

As recently as a couple of years ago, the proposition of pumping LPG into the ground as frac fluid was laughable, from a cost perspective. That perspective has to be changing as natural gas prices continue to tank, and the reality of dwindling water supplies sets in. Water may still be cheaper, but it's also more valuable. 

Earlier this week our Denver IT group was troubleshooting some network issues that were slowing down our work. In order to diagnose the issue, they needed to know which ports some of our computers were connected to.

The problem is that in certain offices, the furniture has been conveniently placed in front of the wall ports, and that furniture weighs approximately the same as the USS Nimitz. In other words, it's not moving. This presents quite a challenge in discerning the ports' identities, which are a combination of letters and numbers that correspond to their switch connections in our server room.

My challenge therefore was to figure out a way to identify a specific port which was obscured by a desk that had about 3" of clearance from the wall. So here's what I did.

I went home at lunch and found my little extension mirror, the one that looks like a dentist's mirror on the end of a radio antenna (for those old enough to remember telescoping car radio antennae). When fully extended, I could contort myself enough to get the mirror positioned in front of the wall port and read the labeling. Sort of. The real problem is that my bifocals aren't synched up with the mirror. Plus there's that whole "mirror image" thing that hurts my brain trying to interpret what I'm barely seeing. Then there was the complicating factor of the darkness behind the desk. Gee, if there was only some way to light the scene, capture an image, and then manipulate it so that I could confirm that I was reading the wall plate accurately.

I'm nothing if not committed - or at least a candidate for being committed. I held the telescoping mirror in my right hand, arm stretched full length and angled just so. I held a small LED flashlight between my teeth, and my iPhone set to camera mode in my left hand. It took some doing, but I finally got the mirror, flashlight, and camera all angled properly, and snapped a picture just before my entire body cramped.

Here's what I had on my phone following that contortion:

This is pretty close to the actual size of the photo as viewed on my phone's screen. You can make out my hand at the lower right, and the mirror is on the left side, near the middle of the picture. Obviously, it wasn't helpful at this size.

So I emailed the photo to myself, and opened it in Photoshop. The view was a little better after cropping:

You can begin to make out the port label, right? Would you stake your life (or your network) on a correct interpretation at this point? Me neither.

A little more massaging was called for. First, I flipped the whole image horizontally, eliminating the mirror image issue. Then I sharpened the image and tweaked the contrast a bit, giving this still-ot-great-but-definitely-usable picture:

Port P2-26. As far as I know, after all that trouble they still didn't figure out what was slowing down the network. But at least I can now add "contortionist" to my résumé.

I do know the characters and the storyline...but you don't, unless you were there. Feel free to make up something.

We were about halfway into our ride yesterday when we pulled up to an intersection and hit the brakes to yield the right of way to an oncoming car. The brake gave way and I thought a cable had snapped.

Fortunately, this is the control for the rear brake, and since our bike has a second rear brake which Debbie controls, we still had plenty of stopping power. But we'll certainly need to get a replacement.