Hydraulic Fracking’s Big Cousin

Whatever your feelings about hydraulic fracturing—the oil- and gas-extraction process often referred to as hydrofracking, or fracking—the technology will continue to be one of the petroleum industry’s go-to extraction tools in the U.S. What’s more, oil services companies have been working hard to refine the technology with fracking gear designed to penetrate deeper into rock formations and more accurately target oil deposits, so that oil and gas trapped there can be released more efficiently.

The new process is called “super fracking,” and for services companies such as Baker Hughes (NYSE:BHI) and Schlumberger (NYSE:SLB), this is where the action is, as a recent Businessweek.com post points out. Fracking basically involves injecting water, chemicals, and other materials such as sand into wellbores at extremely high pressure, which can create new fissures in the rock and accelerate the release of fossil fuels. Super fracking is intended to augment the process.

Variations on super fracking technology, Businessweek notes, include Baker Hughes’ DirectConnect system of blasting more deeply into dense rock to create wider channels and more-concentrated pressure from fracking fluids. Schlumberger offers a technique called HiWAY, which combines fiber with fracking material so that it clumps against the sides of the wellbore and delivers more pressure to deposit targets. Use of HiWAY has increased from two customers a year ago to more than 20, the company says.

Another fracking specialist, Halliburton (NYSE:HAL), has developed a technology called RapidFrac, which uses sliding wellbore sleeves that open at targeted locations to isolate fracking-fluid pressure and accelerate fuel removal without using as much fracking fluid.

None of these developments have assuaged environmentalists’ concerns about the potential hazards of fracking, which include groundwater contamination, migration of fracking chemicals to the surface, contamination problems due to improper disposal of used fracking fluids, and worries that fracking can trigger seismic activity.

Ongoing demand for petroleum products and growth of the fracking industry, though, have prompted ever more investigations into its effects on the environment and public health, so time will tell.