Custom turbine technology has allowed Green Field Energy Services to offer hydraulic fracturing pumps that can run solely and cost-effectively on natural gas, including liquefied natural gas (LNG), compressed natural gas (CNG), and field gas, along with offering oil and gas producers flexibility to use diesel and liquid fuels such as kerosene.
The Lafayette, La.-based company late last year commissioned the first multi-fuel hydraulic fracturing pump that could either run on diesel or natural gas after blood, sweat, tears and attempts with several prototypes, said Rick Fontova, president of Green Field Energy Services, in an interview with Rigzone.
While diesel has been widely used in the oil field service industry for a number of years, the abundance of low-cost, cleaner-burning U.S. gas supplies due to shale exploration has sparked interest among some oil and gas companies to using more natural gas in their operations. This emerging trend prompted interest by Green Field in moving towards a pump that could burn only natural gas on a cost-effective basis, Fontova commented.
Green Field has worked with companies such as Apache Corp. who are seeking to fuel their exploration efforts with natural gas. Last month, Rigzone reported that Green Field has run a hydraulic fracturing pump for Apache at Apache’s Granite Wash fields using 100 percent field gas.
