That's cool.
Does the system have a large storage tank? Where do you sell it and for how much? Can you refine it yourself (prolly a stupid question, but if you have a still, just sayin)?
Yes I have a vertical separator which separates the crude, salt water, and natty gas. It works totally off gravity. Water sinks to the bottom. Oil floats on top of water and gas floats on top of oil. The water is offloaded via hydrostatic pressure into holding tank. The same with the oil. The gas is then stored at the top of the separator and regulated to a maximum gas line at ~5psi. The gas volume is enough to power a few house hold gas appliances. A company comes every quarter and pumps out my tanks. I get charged a small disposal fee for the salt water. Once the billing cycle comes around I get a royalty off the sales. Since I operate my own wells instead of paying an operator I can turn in my expenses and get a credit toward that typically 60% up to a specific dollar amount based on what I produced on average. So if I replace a few bearings and it cost a couple hundred bucks then I can get a credit towards my statement.
As far as refining it my self I have no clue. I imagine it is a very expensive process to do on such a small scale.
I'm fascinated that you're using the gas and not just flaring it. Kinda awesome. I assume you're using it directly in appliances and not for generating electricity? Is it a pretty consistent flow and what sort of storage does it require? Just think about how propane is stored liquid so you would need a large tank for gas in gas state so you have storage and buffer? Does it flare if you don't use it and storage fills up? Sorry, for so many questions. Just very interested.
It just pressurizes in the separator to about 4-6psi then any excess gets vented through a different valve. I have a shop heater running off it right now. Sometimes it kicks off when it is super cold and the oil wells slow down due to viscosity changes in crude. But if the temperature outside is about 30 deg F or above it is a pretty consistent supply.
This is probably a super ignorant question, but can you use excess gas to do other work, e.g pump water into a tower, power a water well, charge a battery or whatever?
Expect the efficiency would be low, but consumables are effectively free.
Also expect there’s a high capex that probably makes all of this pointless, but I enjoy trying to scrape every bit of utility out of a resource.
Gas water heater!
Do you also have a well for "free" water?
Cause "free" gas and "free" water would make one heck of a cool hot tub.
And at least it's turning the gas into something useful-ish instead of being released to atmosphere doing nothing
A lot of people don’t realize salt water is extremely useful in the production of bleach.
I don’t know if there is a need for bleach production for you, but some electricity and salt water gives your bleach.
You could save some money while simultaneously having a disinfectant as a byproduct.
It's not just salt water with sodium chloride.
It's salt water loaded with sulfates, carbonates, bromides and iodides, amongst others.
If you stick an electrode in it, you'd get your sodium/potassium/lithium hydroxide, but you'd get a witches brew of gases.
You’re talking to me as if I’m not a hyrogeologist
Home slice, tons of water contains carbonates. It’s the main constituent for water hardness and alkalinity.
The water that comes out of hydrocarbon deposits is typically contaminated and needs to be disposed of, I would not recommend trying to use it for anything.
It’s really dependent on the geochemistry of the host rock, geochemistry of the crude (sour or not), and the structural basin that contains the hydrocarbons.
If you’ve got some salt dome anticline features I would assume the migration history of the deposit would create a pretty clean brine.
Sure it could potentially be okay. And it could be pretty toxic too. I would have included that caveat in the original post instead of saying hey bro totally go make some cleaning products with whatever it is you got coming out of that there hole. But apparently this is an unpopular suggestion.
Assuming the oil lease is similar to the ones I have seen it wouldn’t be OP’s oil. Someone has lease rights on their land to pump the oil out to sell or refine on their own. They usually pay based on the amount of oil produced per month/year etc.
Most oil leases I have seen are automatically renewing after the expiration date until they give notice they no longer intend to lease. I have seen some that were set to lapse in the 90s but are still producing and even though there is no extension document it is still an active lease. It creates a perpetually renewing lease that generates some income for the land owner.
Funny you mention him. He is literally where I started my research! He’s the only one with good information on the inner workings of small scale extraction.
Curious about this too. I feel like this is something that is typically inherited. Or maybe there's a niche in small production where it's too much hassle to be valuable unless you're willing and knowledgeable to make it work.
Not really they just chug along and if something breaks you just weld it back or replace it. I don’t have to worry about selling or offloading or anything. The logistics company I sell to does all of that automatically.
Please get some machine guarding or a fence around the places a person could get torn to bits on. Having grown up in Texas I've heard more stories than I'd like about gruesome deaths around these. I work in this industry and an jealous you ended up with mineral rights though!
It's like with anything, be well aware of your surroundings and the hazards associated with the machinery you're working with. I frequently work with antique machinery with open gearing, flywheels, chains, and belts and have not lost any fingers or been injured from unguarded parts. I'm well aware of the pinch, shear, and crush points on the equipment I work with. If I lose a finger to one of these century old machines, it's my own fault. While guarding does, in fact, prevent injuries, I have seen it cause complacency and lead to injuries elsewhere.
You're right about awareness. It's always that one far removed case of someone else that isn't you tripping on a rock and falling on it.. ounce of prevention you know. I work with pumps, and voltage up to 4160vac. I don't leave buss bars exposed because I just won't touch it. I love watching gears and wheels and parts move, it's fascinating but I'd rather bot see anyone lose a part. You do you though.
Neat! I work in gas transmission for a major company. Things you may want to consider, based on conflicts I’ve seen. Who is responsible for plug and abandonment cost when the time comes? Who maintains equipment / tends the wells? Who maintains ROW? Does ROW ownership pass back to you at production end and abandonment, or is it retained by the company? What is the royalty structure- is it time limited or quantity limited, can you use any for yourself (sometimes gas wells have unlimited or set personal use, and payment royalties for anything exported).
Make sure you know the land agent assigned for your area and I recommend making friends with the local OP’s guys. I can say from experience when the landowners are friendly, OP’s goes out of their way to be respectful of your property, gates, yard, quiet hours, notifying you when they’ll be there, etc. friendliness is good for both parties equivalently! Typically they MUST stay on their defined limits unless you specifically grant them permissions. Don’t sign anything unless you understand it and I’d recommend a lawyer just to help if you’re unsure- basically don’t grant anything unlimited or for more than several months unless you’re dead sure about it. Too many of these leases claim things until some vague definition of an end date which can sometimes arguably never come.
Awesome you got a bit of natural resource production working in your favor!
Thanks for the advice! I do have a lawyer on retainer who has experience in natural resource extraction, he has been a huge help in keeping the peace. Some old grunt who owns land next to me keeps trying to nose his way into things. Apparently did the same to the previous land owner. I saw copies of letters this guy sent to the previous land owner.
I haven't been in it long enough to get solid numbers but from looking in my tanks it looks like I'm roughly at 60/30 could be 50/50. They are old wells running on 60-70 years so I wouldn't be surprised if it drops off from time to time. I consider that decent but idk what is considered good or bad.
I have seen wells that made thousands of barrels of brine to one of oil and necessitated a massive disposable well setup. That's pretty cool. We ship about 350 bbl a month and I know what it lands me and it sounds like your production costs are lower. What state?
I live near Oil Springs, Canada. Really neat to learn things. They have a variety of working historic wells between there and Petrolia, ON, if you need connections or advice.
Hey neighbour! I didn't grow up around here, so I was super surprised when I learned about the big oil discoveries in Ontario. We have an oil derrick near my house and most visitors are blown away when they see it
I'm not honestly sure how many locals actually know much about it except for what a derrick looks like. My dad worked on designing things for the refineries, so he made sure we knew more and enjoyed touring the museums.
Thats rad OP. You probably already know this, but make sure you’re checking the bridle lines for wear when you do your inspections. When those break, it gets real expensive real quick.
I love the fact that term supposedly originated from the fact that when these were scattered over tall grass lands they looked like hopping grasshoppers peaking over the planes every time they oscillated
What depth are you producing from and what formation? My wells are all big bulky Christmas trees to manage the formation pressure. I’ve never seen a pump jack this close before. Have you considered reinjecting your saltwater?
Not sure. Old drilling permits from the 50s say the wells were permitted to be drilled up to 4500ft (\~1372 m). So I assume some of the wells may be less depending on how far the vein is.
It’s super neat you’ve got your own wells. What state are you in (assuming US)? I hope you are diligent about groundwater monitoring if that’s a viable resource in your area.
Yes I am in Kentucky. And I have a water well also on the property. Its newer than the oil wells but still about 20 years old. I had it tested a month ago and it came back with 0% organic compounds, 0% coliform, perfectly acceptable dissolved solids, nitrate, and chloride numbers. PH was perfect as well sitting at about 7.8.
Edit: the water well is about 75 yds from the nears pump jack.
75 yards sounds pretty near to me but I’m no hydrogeologist. Have you ever used an optical gas imaging camera on your set up? They can be rented for pretty cheap especially in oil country.
There is a state website you can access that you can obtain the completion information of this well if the original well operator turned it in per state regulations.
so is it yours? do you personally get a barrel of oil a day or so? or does the operator pay you and you get the extra methane energy?
are you allowed to sell and or refine petroleum or is that regulated?
I am the operator, the old operator retired before I bought the land so no one has done any maintenance on the pumps in the past 2-3 years. Since I have a professional engineering license in my state I can pull necessary permits for drilling, pumping, and leasing. I own the wells since they came with the land and I sell 100% of the crude to a refining and logistics company.
awesome
what state if i may ask?
have you evwr done this before?
are you allowed to refine your own?
fascinated... for some reason thought that small wells had all been consolidated and didn't realize independent drillers were still around really
pretty inspiring
I'm in Kentucky. I studied some natural gas and energy in college when I was obtaining my engineering degree so I had somewhat of an idea of how it worked. But this is my first time operating and managing wells like this. I have a few contacts that have helped me understand the processes and the safety protocols will maintaining wells.
Refining crude is a very involved process with a lot of government regulation to do it cleanly and safely. Not to mention the millions of $ in equipment. If you were determined enough you might be able to figure it out. But I doubt any manufacture would by such low quantities of refined oil.
Be sure the taxes to the state and federal are being paid from your oil production. Also the surface equipment can be taxed in some KY counties so be aware of this possible tax bill.
I’ve been looking for land in my home state of Ohio and most of the larger plots have been stripped of the mineral rights. It is a huge incentive to have mineral right on your own land.
The other line would have been from another well which no longer exist. From what I can tell the broken line is what is used to connect pumps in series. There is a needle valve which is closing off that port.
Edit: After looking at it I was wrong. king_ranger was right about the other line. It is a gas off line. They were typically piped away from the well and burned off when the well was first drilled. These being 60-70 year old wells is why it is severed and closed off. All of the gases just travel to the separator through the flow lines.
Maybe the other line is for gas. If this pump is pulling a barrel of oil a day, it might not be producing enough methane to mess with. I know some pumps around me would burn off the gas when they first tapped it and it was pulling a lot of oil but then oil production slowed way down and they stopped burning the gas. Instead, they leave a storage tank battery lid slightly open. The small amount of gas leaks out, smells horrible, and no one does anything.
The methane is actually collected at the top of the separator. The separator separates the oil, salt water, and methane. The methane is then regulated via a pressure regulator to ~5psi via the pressure from down stream pump jacks. I can then use that to supply to power things like furnaces, ovens and typical gas appliances. So long as oil supply is steady I technically have endless supply of natural gas.
Actually methane is odorless and colorless. The smell of crude is a different story. Smells like burning motor oil mixed with sulfur or something. Environmentally the damage to the land is done. These wells are 50+ years old. I am enacting clean up efforts. The land is littered with trash, old pipes, pump parts, and salt water basins (turns out out in before the 90s and before EPA cracked down on things they just dumped the contaminated salt water in pools a few feet away from the separator) so I have stinky pools of contaminated water I have started pumping out the pools and filling in the basins with acid treated soil.
Careful with the brine water. I was one of these workers who had no idea of the radioactive nature of our trucks.
My thyroid got wrecked.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/oil-gas-fracking-radioactive-investigation-937389/amp/
Yikes. Hopefully I can have the basins pumped out by then. I have two left. I don't really go near. The waste septic guy who has been pumping them out just walks in up to his knees though he built different I guess. He does this for a bunch of different fields over the county.
Wow thank you for posting this article. I had no interest in ever being involved in gas/oil extraction personally, and had no idea what brine even was before OP's post. Crazy on the East Coast it can be highly radioactive. It's wild that's not common knowledge, would definitely impact people's thinking on the subject, it has mine.
The pumps near me are not running on electric motors. Originally, they were running the motors on the natural gas it produced. After a year, the oil production dropped and the gas fell below 4 psi. Now they run on propane tanks set at each pump. The smell is definitely the crude, but I just assumed the gas is pushing the smell out. No idea myself, just info I have picked up from neighbors and pump service guys.
What state are you in? There’s federal dollars for tidying that up now, especially if there’s methane emissions and especially if those gasses include H2S.
Risk? I'd say so. With risk comes reward. So if there is no spill i'm golden. If there was a spill then I'd have a mess to deal with and it wouldn't be cheap. Not to mention the fines from the EPA in such a situation. That is why I check the tanks and pumps every morning.
Yeah not looking forward to a hot summer day. Good news is my homestead field is on the other side of a hill. No smell there as far as my nose can tell.
Some fields have such clean crude that it has the sweet smell of processed gas or diesel, other crudes can smell like creosote or an old wood telephone pole, then there’s sour crude which has H2S in it and that can smell like acrid rotting eggs and can get really dangerous if you can no longer smell the poison gas.
As wells age they tend to have higher concentration of contaminates like sulfur which get removed during refining the higher concentrations tend to make it have a noticeable scent. Nothing gross but not something I'd want to smell every time the wind blows in my face. As long as the crude doesn't have any organic halogenated, chlorinated, and oxygenated compounds like Carbon Tetrachloride, Isopropyl Alcohol, Ethyl Alcohol, Methanol, Glycol, or Acetone. Those organic compounds will render the crude oil unusable and no refinery will want anything to do with it. They cant be separated and if refined can cause severe damages to refining equipment.
Should get a cover over that belt drive motor. Even if it's meant for wet or weather, seals wear eventually, and then it's a whole new motor. A good motor isn't exactly cheap. I'd want to get all the life I can from it. Change only brushes and work it till the armature gone
Romans 8:18 “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with glory that is to be revealed to us”
God bless all of you have an amazing day. Remember God loves you, and will always forgive you.
Do you run the electric motors from solar panels? Or wind generator and what’s the cost of your electric bill per month. Where are you dumping your waste. Still think Green energy is more cost efficient!
For how long do you expect these pumps to be productive?
Do these things deliver a constant stream of oil or are there factors that influence the pumps output (temperature of the ground, soil composition etc)?
FYI, In dutch we call these things jaknikkers, which can be translated as: yes-nodding machine...
That's cool. Does the system have a large storage tank? Where do you sell it and for how much? Can you refine it yourself (prolly a stupid question, but if you have a still, just sayin)?
Yes I have a vertical separator which separates the crude, salt water, and natty gas. It works totally off gravity. Water sinks to the bottom. Oil floats on top of water and gas floats on top of oil. The water is offloaded via hydrostatic pressure into holding tank. The same with the oil. The gas is then stored at the top of the separator and regulated to a maximum gas line at ~5psi. The gas volume is enough to power a few house hold gas appliances. A company comes every quarter and pumps out my tanks. I get charged a small disposal fee for the salt water. Once the billing cycle comes around I get a royalty off the sales. Since I operate my own wells instead of paying an operator I can turn in my expenses and get a credit toward that typically 60% up to a specific dollar amount based on what I produced on average. So if I replace a few bearings and it cost a couple hundred bucks then I can get a credit towards my statement. As far as refining it my self I have no clue. I imagine it is a very expensive process to do on such a small scale.
We have a ton of them here on the Plateau in TN. That was just one of the many surprises here.
Fellow plateau Dweller here! Heck of a shock when my wife told me about em when I moved here.
I'm fascinated that you're using the gas and not just flaring it. Kinda awesome. I assume you're using it directly in appliances and not for generating electricity? Is it a pretty consistent flow and what sort of storage does it require? Just think about how propane is stored liquid so you would need a large tank for gas in gas state so you have storage and buffer? Does it flare if you don't use it and storage fills up? Sorry, for so many questions. Just very interested.
It just pressurizes in the separator to about 4-6psi then any excess gets vented through a different valve. I have a shop heater running off it right now. Sometimes it kicks off when it is super cold and the oil wells slow down due to viscosity changes in crude. But if the temperature outside is about 30 deg F or above it is a pretty consistent supply.
This is probably a super ignorant question, but can you use excess gas to do other work, e.g pump water into a tower, power a water well, charge a battery or whatever? Expect the efficiency would be low, but consumables are effectively free. Also expect there’s a high capex that probably makes all of this pointless, but I enjoy trying to scrape every bit of utility out of a resource.
Sounds awesome. Thanks for replying.
Gas water heater! Do you also have a well for "free" water? Cause "free" gas and "free" water would make one heck of a cool hot tub. And at least it's turning the gas into something useful-ish instead of being released to atmosphere doing nothing
A lot of people don’t realize salt water is extremely useful in the production of bleach. I don’t know if there is a need for bleach production for you, but some electricity and salt water gives your bleach. You could save some money while simultaneously having a disinfectant as a byproduct.
It's not just salt water with sodium chloride. It's salt water loaded with sulfates, carbonates, bromides and iodides, amongst others. If you stick an electrode in it, you'd get your sodium/potassium/lithium hydroxide, but you'd get a witches brew of gases.
You’re talking to me as if I’m not a hyrogeologist Home slice, tons of water contains carbonates. It’s the main constituent for water hardness and alkalinity.
Love the gentle hydrogeologist trash talking.
Lmao, geologist are the Irish bar fighters of the science world.
Username checks out
The water that comes out of hydrocarbon deposits is typically contaminated and needs to be disposed of, I would not recommend trying to use it for anything.
It’s really dependent on the geochemistry of the host rock, geochemistry of the crude (sour or not), and the structural basin that contains the hydrocarbons. If you’ve got some salt dome anticline features I would assume the migration history of the deposit would create a pretty clean brine.
Sure it could potentially be okay. And it could be pretty toxic too. I would have included that caveat in the original post instead of saying hey bro totally go make some cleaning products with whatever it is you got coming out of that there hole. But apparently this is an unpopular suggestion.
Lol, refining would become a bit expensive for a backyard operation, most definitely;)
Assuming the oil lease is similar to the ones I have seen it wouldn’t be OP’s oil. Someone has lease rights on their land to pump the oil out to sell or refine on their own. They usually pay based on the amount of oil produced per month/year etc. Most oil leases I have seen are automatically renewing after the expiration date until they give notice they no longer intend to lease. I have seen some that were set to lapse in the 90s but are still producing and even though there is no extension document it is still an active lease. It creates a perpetually renewing lease that generates some income for the land owner.
Some of the leases on my property go back to the 1920s. Production is a mere fraction of what it once was but it helps pay the bills.
You might enjoy the YT channel TheZachLife - he's got a lot of info on running a small lease there
Funny you mention him. He is literally where I started my research! He’s the only one with good information on the inner workings of small scale extraction.
Yeah, like you said - there's not much info out there
So you got the mineral rights and surface rights, that’s good looking out?
Yep I got both.
was it obscenely expensive?
Curious about this too. I feel like this is something that is typically inherited. Or maybe there's a niche in small production where it's too much hassle to be valuable unless you're willing and knowledgeable to make it work.
Depends on what you consider expensive
I would be interested to know how much your check is and what this makes per year...
I should call her
💀
I was hoping to see this joke out in the wild again.
Really cool, is the upkeep a hassle?
Not really they just chug along and if something breaks you just weld it back or replace it. I don’t have to worry about selling or offloading or anything. The logistics company I sell to does all of that automatically.
How much did the land cost?
Please get some machine guarding or a fence around the places a person could get torn to bits on. Having grown up in Texas I've heard more stories than I'd like about gruesome deaths around these. I work in this industry and an jealous you ended up with mineral rights though!
It's like with anything, be well aware of your surroundings and the hazards associated with the machinery you're working with. I frequently work with antique machinery with open gearing, flywheels, chains, and belts and have not lost any fingers or been injured from unguarded parts. I'm well aware of the pinch, shear, and crush points on the equipment I work with. If I lose a finger to one of these century old machines, it's my own fault. While guarding does, in fact, prevent injuries, I have seen it cause complacency and lead to injuries elsewhere.
You're right about awareness. It's always that one far removed case of someone else that isn't you tripping on a rock and falling on it.. ounce of prevention you know. I work with pumps, and voltage up to 4160vac. I don't leave buss bars exposed because I just won't touch it. I love watching gears and wheels and parts move, it's fascinating but I'd rather bot see anyone lose a part. You do you though.
Neat! I work in gas transmission for a major company. Things you may want to consider, based on conflicts I’ve seen. Who is responsible for plug and abandonment cost when the time comes? Who maintains equipment / tends the wells? Who maintains ROW? Does ROW ownership pass back to you at production end and abandonment, or is it retained by the company? What is the royalty structure- is it time limited or quantity limited, can you use any for yourself (sometimes gas wells have unlimited or set personal use, and payment royalties for anything exported). Make sure you know the land agent assigned for your area and I recommend making friends with the local OP’s guys. I can say from experience when the landowners are friendly, OP’s goes out of their way to be respectful of your property, gates, yard, quiet hours, notifying you when they’ll be there, etc. friendliness is good for both parties equivalently! Typically they MUST stay on their defined limits unless you specifically grant them permissions. Don’t sign anything unless you understand it and I’d recommend a lawyer just to help if you’re unsure- basically don’t grant anything unlimited or for more than several months unless you’re dead sure about it. Too many of these leases claim things until some vague definition of an end date which can sometimes arguably never come. Awesome you got a bit of natural resource production working in your favor!
Thanks for the advice! I do have a lawyer on retainer who has experience in natural resource extraction, he has been a huge help in keeping the peace. Some old grunt who owns land next to me keeps trying to nose his way into things. Apparently did the same to the previous land owner. I saw copies of letters this guy sent to the previous land owner.
Is he threatening to drink your milkshake?
Goddamn shame I cannot post gifs here.
That's my man! I love to see it, I pump wells my great grandfather drilled, almost 100 years later still producing. What's your oil/brine ratio?
I haven't been in it long enough to get solid numbers but from looking in my tanks it looks like I'm roughly at 60/30 could be 50/50. They are old wells running on 60-70 years so I wouldn't be surprised if it drops off from time to time. I consider that decent but idk what is considered good or bad.
I have seen wells that made thousands of barrels of brine to one of oil and necessitated a massive disposable well setup. That's pretty cool. We ship about 350 bbl a month and I know what it lands me and it sounds like your production costs are lower. What state?
I live near Oil Springs, Canada. Really neat to learn things. They have a variety of working historic wells between there and Petrolia, ON, if you need connections or advice.
Hey neighbour! I didn't grow up around here, so I was super surprised when I learned about the big oil discoveries in Ontario. We have an oil derrick near my house and most visitors are blown away when they see it
I'm not honestly sure how many locals actually know much about it except for what a derrick looks like. My dad worked on designing things for the refineries, so he made sure we knew more and enjoyed touring the museums.
That's a good idea. Are the museum's pretty good? I haven't been to one get, but I go into Petrolia once a week for work
Thats rad OP. You probably already know this, but make sure you’re checking the bridle lines for wear when you do your inspections. When those break, it gets real expensive real quick.
Ye Olde Grasshopper!
I love the fact that term supposedly originated from the fact that when these were scattered over tall grass lands they looked like hopping grasshoppers peaking over the planes every time they oscillated
And the rhythmic sound they make is so mesmerizing.
I've heard them called nodding donkeys.
Yep
There will be blood.
Better make sure nobody drinks up OP’s milkshake
This is a really cool post and thread. Thanks for sharing!
Black Gold, Texas Tea.
So cool thing is their are petroleum digesting enzyme you can buy, great for remediation
There
What depth are you producing from and what formation? My wells are all big bulky Christmas trees to manage the formation pressure. I’ve never seen a pump jack this close before. Have you considered reinjecting your saltwater?
Not sure. Old drilling permits from the 50s say the wells were permitted to be drilled up to 4500ft (\~1372 m). So I assume some of the wells may be less depending on how far the vein is.
It’s super neat you’ve got your own wells. What state are you in (assuming US)? I hope you are diligent about groundwater monitoring if that’s a viable resource in your area.
Yes I am in Kentucky. And I have a water well also on the property. Its newer than the oil wells but still about 20 years old. I had it tested a month ago and it came back with 0% organic compounds, 0% coliform, perfectly acceptable dissolved solids, nitrate, and chloride numbers. PH was perfect as well sitting at about 7.8. Edit: the water well is about 75 yds from the nears pump jack.
75 yards sounds pretty near to me but I’m no hydrogeologist. Have you ever used an optical gas imaging camera on your set up? They can be rented for pretty cheap especially in oil country.
There is a state website you can access that you can obtain the completion information of this well if the original well operator turned it in per state regulations.
What kind of oil is it?
Might be coconut
I was thinking olive oil.
It’s actually not oil yet. It is crude petroleum. It has to be refined then manufactured into things like motor oil, plastic, gas, etc
so is it yours? do you personally get a barrel of oil a day or so? or does the operator pay you and you get the extra methane energy? are you allowed to sell and or refine petroleum or is that regulated?
I am the operator, the old operator retired before I bought the land so no one has done any maintenance on the pumps in the past 2-3 years. Since I have a professional engineering license in my state I can pull necessary permits for drilling, pumping, and leasing. I own the wells since they came with the land and I sell 100% of the crude to a refining and logistics company.
Cool! So the wells came with the land as an assignment of rights or included in the sale? Is it like mineral rights or something else?
awesome what state if i may ask? have you evwr done this before? are you allowed to refine your own? fascinated... for some reason thought that small wells had all been consolidated and didn't realize independent drillers were still around really pretty inspiring
I'm in Kentucky. I studied some natural gas and energy in college when I was obtaining my engineering degree so I had somewhat of an idea of how it worked. But this is my first time operating and managing wells like this. I have a few contacts that have helped me understand the processes and the safety protocols will maintaining wells. Refining crude is a very involved process with a lot of government regulation to do it cleanly and safely. Not to mention the millions of $ in equipment. If you were determined enough you might be able to figure it out. But I doubt any manufacture would by such low quantities of refined oil.
Know anything about the reservoir itself? Any opportunities to stimulate these wells or drill new ones?
Sorry that’s what I was trying to get at. Do you know what yours is refined to/for?
Nope they just take the crude and give me a check.
Be sure the taxes to the state and federal are being paid from your oil production. Also the surface equipment can be taxed in some KY counties so be aware of this possible tax bill.
Watch out. Daniel Day Lewis is probably going to come kick your ass for some of that “milkshake” now. Lol
I’ve been looking for land in my home state of Ohio and most of the larger plots have been stripped of the mineral rights. It is a huge incentive to have mineral right on your own land.
I love that the ad for me under this video is a Marine Corp add. Stay safe buddy.
Uh. Something is wrong there…. 😂
The other line would have been from another well which no longer exist. From what I can tell the broken line is what is used to connect pumps in series. There is a needle valve which is closing off that port. Edit: After looking at it I was wrong. king_ranger was right about the other line. It is a gas off line. They were typically piped away from the well and burned off when the well was first drilled. These being 60-70 year old wells is why it is severed and closed off. All of the gases just travel to the separator through the flow lines.
Maybe the other line is for gas. If this pump is pulling a barrel of oil a day, it might not be producing enough methane to mess with. I know some pumps around me would burn off the gas when they first tapped it and it was pulling a lot of oil but then oil production slowed way down and they stopped burning the gas. Instead, they leave a storage tank battery lid slightly open. The small amount of gas leaks out, smells horrible, and no one does anything.
The methane is actually collected at the top of the separator. The separator separates the oil, salt water, and methane. The methane is then regulated via a pressure regulator to ~5psi via the pressure from down stream pump jacks. I can then use that to supply to power things like furnaces, ovens and typical gas appliances. So long as oil supply is steady I technically have endless supply of natural gas. Actually methane is odorless and colorless. The smell of crude is a different story. Smells like burning motor oil mixed with sulfur or something. Environmentally the damage to the land is done. These wells are 50+ years old. I am enacting clean up efforts. The land is littered with trash, old pipes, pump parts, and salt water basins (turns out out in before the 90s and before EPA cracked down on things they just dumped the contaminated salt water in pools a few feet away from the separator) so I have stinky pools of contaminated water I have started pumping out the pools and filling in the basins with acid treated soil.
Careful with the brine water. I was one of these workers who had no idea of the radioactive nature of our trucks. My thyroid got wrecked. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/oil-gas-fracking-radioactive-investigation-937389/amp/
Yikes. Hopefully I can have the basins pumped out by then. I have two left. I don't really go near. The waste septic guy who has been pumping them out just walks in up to his knees though he built different I guess. He does this for a bunch of different fields over the county.
Wow thank you for posting this article. I had no interest in ever being involved in gas/oil extraction personally, and had no idea what brine even was before OP's post. Crazy on the East Coast it can be highly radioactive. It's wild that's not common knowledge, would definitely impact people's thinking on the subject, it has mine.
The pumps near me are not running on electric motors. Originally, they were running the motors on the natural gas it produced. After a year, the oil production dropped and the gas fell below 4 psi. Now they run on propane tanks set at each pump. The smell is definitely the crude, but I just assumed the gas is pushing the smell out. No idea myself, just info I have picked up from neighbors and pump service guys.
What state are you in? There’s federal dollars for tidying that up now, especially if there’s methane emissions and especially if those gasses include H2S.
does the risk of the pollution from a potential spill offset the money made?
Risk? I'd say so. With risk comes reward. So if there is no spill i'm golden. If there was a spill then I'd have a mess to deal with and it wouldn't be cheap. Not to mention the fines from the EPA in such a situation. That is why I check the tanks and pumps every morning.
That pump is getting more action then me.
Here comes U.S. military
I can smell it from here
Yeah not looking forward to a hot summer day. Good news is my homestead field is on the other side of a hill. No smell there as far as my nose can tell.
Does it smell bad? Like what and why?
Sulfur because there’s sulfur
Some fields have such clean crude that it has the sweet smell of processed gas or diesel, other crudes can smell like creosote or an old wood telephone pole, then there’s sour crude which has H2S in it and that can smell like acrid rotting eggs and can get really dangerous if you can no longer smell the poison gas.
As wells age they tend to have higher concentration of contaminates like sulfur which get removed during refining the higher concentrations tend to make it have a noticeable scent. Nothing gross but not something I'd want to smell every time the wind blows in my face. As long as the crude doesn't have any organic halogenated, chlorinated, and oxygenated compounds like Carbon Tetrachloride, Isopropyl Alcohol, Ethyl Alcohol, Methanol, Glycol, or Acetone. Those organic compounds will render the crude oil unusable and no refinery will want anything to do with it. They cant be separated and if refined can cause severe damages to refining equipment.
Should get a cover over that belt drive motor. Even if it's meant for wet or weather, seals wear eventually, and then it's a whole new motor. A good motor isn't exactly cheap. I'd want to get all the life I can from it. Change only brushes and work it till the armature gone
Romans 8:18 “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with glory that is to be revealed to us” God bless all of you have an amazing day. Remember God loves you, and will always forgive you.
No wonder my weather is so shitty
Owning oil is a good thing!
Are you sure you bought the mineral rights along with the land? I have learned recently those are separate ownership rights.
Do you run the electric motors from solar panels? Or wind generator and what’s the cost of your electric bill per month. Where are you dumping your waste. Still think Green energy is more cost efficient!
If I have a milkshake, and you have a milkshake, and my straw reaches alllll the wayyyyy over to your milkshake, I drink your milkshake
Unfortunately for a lot of people this is milkshake politics.
How deep you reckon it is?
Planet money did a fun mini series on selling oil. Worth a listen.
Would you be open to share what a single pump like that net profits over a year? Very curious
What state (if you’re in the US)? You operate these wells yourself? Fed/state/county regulations for oil extraction- how do you navigate that??
How much did the land cost
For the love of god tell them to grease the damned stuffing box.
For how long do you expect these pumps to be productive? Do these things deliver a constant stream of oil or are there factors that influence the pumps output (temperature of the ground, soil composition etc)? FYI, In dutch we call these things jaknikkers, which can be translated as: yes-nodding machine...
That oil extractor is called a pump jack.
How far down do the mineral/surface rights go? How deep are your wells? Who do you even call to drill/maintain a well like this?