Дэвид Балдаччи - Walk the Wire

Now Decker came to Will Robie’s involvement. He only had Robie’s word for it that he worked for the federal government. But Robie had saved his life. And the man who had tried to kill Decker? Where had he come from?

And finally, Decker came back to what his brother-in-law had said the man from the Air Force station had told him about sitting atop a time bomb. Did it tie into the row of ambulances at the facility, and did it explain the reluctance of the station’s commander, Colonel Sumter, to cooperate with them? They had to find the man who had uttered those words. And he would need Baker’s help in learning more about this fracking business. In Decker’s experience, when there was money to be made, big money as here, that provided an excellent motive to kill.

As if humans really needed a reason to hurt other humans.

With that thought, he fell into a troubled sleep.

“This looks like a command center,” said Jamison.

She and Decker were inside a roomy trailer staring at a series of computer screens set atop a long, laminated desk. They were at an oil rig site that was in the process of being fracked. Baker sat in a swivel chair in front of the desktop units, his gaze flicking alertly over each screen. The trailer had a bathroom and an AC window unit and was quite comfortable inside.

“That’s exactly what it is,” said Baker. “We actually call it the data center because that’s what all this is,” he added, pointing to the screens. “Data.”

Jamison indicated a Maxwell House coffee can sitting on a table with its plastic lid on. “You’ve got a Keurig over there, so what’s that for?”

“Don’t open that top,” warned a grinning Baker. “It’s the other supervisor’s spit can. You can’t smoke anywhere around a rig, so nicotine addicts chew tobacco instead.”

“Great, thanks for the heads-up,” said Jamison, looking disgusted.

Baker pointed to one screen. “This monitors the barrels of fracking fluid we pump in the hole by the second.”

“Is it important to monitor it that closely?” asked Jamison.

“Oh, yeah, because things can go sideways fast and people might get hurt, and you could end up wrecking a wellhead site. Nobody wants that to happen. Now, we’re just beginning to frack this well. The drilling and piping have all been done by a separate crew.”

“How does all that work?” asked Decker.

“The initial well bore is drilled. After that’s done the drill pipe and bit are taken out. Then a steel tube, which we refer to as a surface casing, is put in the hole. That makes the sides of the well rigid and stable and also prevents stuff from leaking out. Then cement is poured in to secure the casing tube. We pressurize the shaft to make sure it’s holding okay, sort of like testing a plane fuselage. Then the drill pipe and bit goes back in and the drilling continues vertically. When that’s completed the horizontal drilling starts up. We continuously lower in more casing and cement to make sure everything is secure. When that’s all said and done, then comes the insertion of the fracking fluid. It’s all done in stages . And each one takes about two hours.”

“How many stages?” asked Decker.

“Nearly a hundred,” said Baker.

“Good God,” said Jamison. “Why so many?”

“We’re going down a long way, and we have to break up the rock in just the right manner and direction.” He went to the small window and pointed out. “Those trucks will pump the fluid mix into the wellhead through all those connected pipes. Now, we’ve also got an artillery van where they prep the necessary explosives and attach the detonating gun to the perforating gun.”

“An artillery van,” exclaimed Jamison. “Sounds like you’re going to war.”

“We are in a way, against some really tough subterranean rock that’s a zillion years old and has never been disturbed before. We pump the gun down to blast fractures in the rock. Then the perforation device extends fissures or cracks that reach into the oil deposits, sort of like fingers poking in to get something. Then we drop a ball down and seat it in a plug. That isolates the area we’re interested in, and that’s when we start blasting fracking fluids into the rock cracks and fissures.”

“What do the fluids consist of?” asked Decker.

He led them back over to the screens. “It’s a pretty well mapped-out mixology of stuff. Sand and fresh water make up ninety-nine-point-five percent of what we put down the hole. The rest are chemicals — biocide to kill bacteria in the water so it can’t foul the product, then other chemicals to provide viscosity to the liquid. Guar gum, magnesium chloride, barite, hydrochloric and citric acid, ethanol and methanol, sodium erythorbate. All this stuff has different purposes. Some help with gelling, others with iron control, corrosion counteractor, clay stabilization, friction reducer, crosslinker, and the list goes on and on.” He grinned. “Hell, some days I feel like I’ve got my degree in chemistry three times over. These graphs over here chart the PSI in the pipe. We use regular sand, which we refer to as the proppant, to start with, and then change over to ceramic sand, which holds the fractures open longer.” He glanced at Decker. “Like your ‘stent’ analogy to unblock an artery. We use about two hundred fifty thousand pounds of proppant per stage.”

“That’s a lot more than a sandbox full,” noted Decker.

“Which is why you see all those trucks hauling it in,” replied Baker. “Without sand none of this works. Natural sand comes from Wisconsin. The ceramic stuff is imported from China.”

“So the Bakken region is chock full of oil and gas?” said Decker.

“Northwest corner of North Dakota hit the jackpot for fossil fuels. All told the state is pumping about two million barrels of oil a day. To give you some perspective, the Saudis alone do around twelve million barrels a day. The Middle East in total has about half the world’s total proven oil reserves. And over forty percent of the natural gas.”

“Which is why everyone pays attention to what goes on there,” noted Decker.

“So most of the oil is trucked out?” said Jamison.

“No, a lot of the oil captured here actually gets transported out via the Dakota Access Pipeline, which is a lot cheaper than trucking it to a train. But that pipeline is filling up fast, so they’re building another one.”

Jamison said, “And this is one of Stuart McClellan’s operations?”

“That’s right.”

Decker said, “The Air Force station is close to here. And the Brothers’ Colony.”

“Yep. McClellan’s rigs are the only ones hereabouts except for one company also located near the Air Force station.”

“What about all the gas flares?” said Jamison. “Isn’t that wasteful?”

“It is,” conceded Baker. “But there aren’t enough pipelines here to transport the gas. And even if there were, the gas up here has a high percentage of hydrocarbons. Pipeline operators hate that because it can clog the pipe.”

“What’s the solution?” asked Decker.

“They’re coming up with a technology to separate the methane from the hydrocarbons right onsite.”

“Do any problems come up with fracking?” asked Decker.

He nodded. “Something called a ‘screen-out’ is fairly common. That happens when the sand plugs up the perforations. The pump automatically shuts down when that happens because the PSI spikes and the warning bells go off.”

“What do you do to fix it?” asked Jamison.

“We open the well and force up lots of barrels of fluid that we just sent down to clean up the blockage. If there are more serious issues, like a well needs some type of invasive intervention because it’s deteriorating, equipment has corroded, or the reservoir conditions have changed, then we call in a workover rig. They’ll drop in a wireline to lower both measurement and testing equipment to see what the issue is and arrive at a solution. They can usually find an answer and get it back online.”