Venezuela now has ample proven reserves of natural gas, ranking as the eighth country in the world with the highest proven reserves of natural gas and the first in Latin America ... and thanks to the significant participation of natural gas in the national energy market, it is also possible to save a lot of oil.
Proven gas reserves in Venezuela reach 151 Trillion cubic feet of gas (BPC), and have a volume of 40 trillion possible reserves and a resource base of approximately 196 trillion BPC, to total a volume of reserves of 427 trillion cubic feet. According to the National Gas Entity (Enagas), under the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum, our country will go from eighth to third place as the country with the largest gas reserves in the world and the first in Latin America.
These figures for gas reserves place us among the first in the world, but when it comes to accounting for production we fell drastically down the ranking, for not having invested on time and corruption in the country, which invades the oil sector.
As is the custom of the governments, many projects, studies and plans are made, but when there are large reserves of oil and gas worldwide, the national and international private capital yearns to participate in the activities of exploration, production and commercialization of natural gas.
Experts and experts in the oil and gas industry have warned the country of the consequences of these gaps, which are weakening the country's strategic positioning in the face of border interests that include a potential reduction in the volume of recoverable reserves and therefore in the production of hydrocarbons, as it is well known that many of these deposits, especially in the area of Plataforma Deltana and part of the Mariscal Sucre, are communicated and consequently also being exploited in parallel by neighboring countries. Obviously this puts Venezuela in a position of evident disadvantage, beyond the agreements signed with these countries regarding the exploitation of these shared interests, since it could make a large portion of the remaining hydrocarbons on the Venezuelan side difficult and practically irrecoverable.
We are going to start the main part of this article, which is what draws our attention, we explain: for the profitable extraction of unconventional gas two techniques known as horizontal drilling and fracking or hydraulic fracturing are used. Initially, three-dimensional geology studies are located by potential deposits of shale, which is a rock with low levels of permeability. This feature prevents the gas from moving through the rock to form a conventional fuel reservoir. The shales are rocks where the trapped natural gas lies and for its release the fracture process is required.
The perforation starts vertically and upon reaching the reservoir the tube changes direction continuing with a horizontal perforation. This allows the deposit to be drilled in different slopes covering a larger area. Once the target has been reached, detonators with explosive devices that fracture the formation are activated through the drill pipe.
To this first fracture is added the fracking consisting of the injection of high pressure water mixed with chemicals and sands in order to deepen fractures in the rock and promote the release of trapped gas and its flow to the extraction tube.
The contradictory thing is if Venezuela has large reserves of conventional gas, because it does not continue and invest in the gas projects that have and have suffered different delays due to improvisations and plans changes, because to start the exploration of shale gas that is done with the technique of fracking that experts and studies have proven to cause serious problems to the environment and health. If we have a lake of Maracaibo contaminated with the extraction of hydrocarbons and there is very little investment for its recovery of its waters.