The industrialization of rural West Virginia caused by the Marcellus Shale gas play

8/8/2019 The industrialization of rural West Virginia caused by the Marcellus Shale gas play

1/26

The industrialization of ruralWest Virginia

caused by the

Marcellus Shale gas playWest Virginia

Surface Owners Rights Organization

1500 Dixie Street, Charleston, West Virginia 25311

Voice/Voice Mail 304-346-5891 - Fax 304-346-8981www.wvsoro.org

Copyright December 2010


2/26

Introduction

We are facing the industrialization of rural West Virginia.

A few years ago, Marcellus Shale gas was unrecoverable and West Virginiawas a relative backwater in the oil and gas industry. And West Virginia was a relativebackwater in the oil and gas industry.

The new techniques of high volume hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drillinghave made a sea change in all of that. The Marcellus Shale is now the secondlargest field of gas -- in the WORLD. It is twice the size of the gas fields in Saudi

Arabia. Major oil companies like Exxon are buying up gas resources here.Conventional shallow wells that cost $300,000.00 to drill have given way to 6 to 8horizontal wells drilled from one well site. And each horizontal well costs $3 Million ormore to drill. This drilling causes an exponential increase in surface disturbance,waste use and waste disposal. It also requires compressor stations and staging areasand greatly increases demands on roads and other infrastructure.

The following images show the industrialization of rural West Virginia that isoccurring because of Marcellus Shale development and the associated problems thatrequire a response from state government.


3/26

Conventional Shallow Gas Well

This is an aerial photograph of a typical conventional shallow gas well. These sites occupy 1 to 3 acres. They canbe drilled in 30 to 45 days. Note the small drilling pit used to collect cuttings and other waste. Also, note the twoblue, upright tanks used to hold the water that is pumped down the well to fracture the gas formation.(WV-SORO photograph)


4/26

Vertical Gas Well to the Marcellus Shale

This is an aerial photograph of a typical vertical gas well to the Marcellus Shale. These sites range from 3 to 5acres. Note the larger drilling pit. And instead of two tractor-trailer size tanks to hold the frac water, note theOlympic swimming pool-sized water impoundment behind the drill pad. (An additional water storage impoundmentis not in the photo.) (WV-SORO photograph)


5/26

Horizontal Gas Wells Being Drilled

to the Marcellus Shale

This is a centralized well pad on where 4 to 6 horizontal gas wells are being drilled to the Marcellus Shale. Thesesites are even larger than a vertical well site 5 to 8 acres. It takes nearly 6 months to complete each horizontalwell, and the driller may need to come back later to frac the wells again. (Courtesy of a surface owner)


6/26

Centralized WaterImpoundment

Some drillers use one large, centralized water impoundment for several wells being drilled in the same area. (Note thepeople in this picture also appear in the next picture.) (WV-SORO photograph)


7/26

Centralized WaterImpoundment

This is a wider view of the same centralized impoundment. (Note the same people in the back right of this picture werein the previous picture.) The water has to come from somewhere. After fracing, much of it flows back out of thewell. It is filled with hundreds of chemicals that were either put in the water during the injection or that were picked

up in the target formation while underground. This wastewater must be transported off-site, treated and disposedof safely. (WV-SORO photograph)


8/26

WaterImpoundment Failure

In the Spring of 2010, poor construction/inadequate oversight resulted in the failure of most impoundments built on topof hills in Wetzel County due to landslips and/or actual overflows.

(Courtesy Wetzel County Action Group, www.wcag-wv.org)


9/26

WaterImpoundment Failure

On December 12, 2009, this Chesapeake impoundment in Wetzel County was overflowing. On December 14, a slipblocked the road as a result of the overflow on the 12th. A four-wheel drive mule was needed to get a patient tothe ambulance. (Courtesy Wetzel County Action Group, www.wcag-wv.org)


10/26

Laying of a Gathering Line

Once the well goes into production, gathering pipelines are needed to take the gas from the well to compressorstations. This photo shows the laying of a gathering line. In addition much larger transmission lines (not pictured)are needed take the gas to market. (Courtesy of a surface owner)


11/26

Air Pollution

In addition to increases in surface disturbance, water use and waste disposal, the Marcellus Shale developmentdegrades air quality. Many of the processes involved with this development release nitrogen oxide (NOx), volatileorganic compounds (VOCs) and other potentially harmful substances into the air.



12/26

Compressor Station

Although the gas comes out of the ground all by itself, compressor stations have to be built to move the gas furtherthrough pipelines. In addition to surface disturbance, these compressor stations are also a source of air pollutionand noise. (Courtesy Wetzel County Action Group, www.wcag-wv.org)


13/26

Industrialization: Satellite View

It is not just the size of these well pads and other disturbances and facilities that are causing the industrialization of ruralWest Virginia. It is the sheer numbers and density of them. This image shows a rural area of West Virginia insouthern Marshall County and northern Wetzel County in 2004, before the recent drilling boom/Marcellus Shaleplay began. (Courtesy SkyTruth, www.skytruth.org and Google Earth)


14/26


This is the same area in 2007. Note a few new well sites. (Courtesy SkyTruth, www.skytruth.org and Google Earth)


15/26


This is the same area in 2009. The black/yellow dots are all permitted Marcellus Shale wells. Most of them have beendrilled and you can see the disturbance of the surface. (Not all of them have been drilled or necessarily will bedrilled, but others, particularly additional horizontal wells, are likely to be permitted.)

(Courtesy SkyTruth, www.skytruth.org and Google Earth)


16/26

Industrialization: Victory Field

This is the same area of Marshall and Wetzel counties with indicators for the location of well sites, compressor stationsand storage tanks. (Courtesy Wetzel County Action Group, www.wcag-wv.org and Google Earth)


17/26

Industrialization: Victory Field

State road map of the same Victory Field area of Marshall and Wetzel counties.



18/26

Road Damage

West Virginias rural roads cannot handle the industrialization that is occurring due to Marcellus Shale development.This is a local road that was suitable for access to a few farms. It takes hundreds and hundreds of tractor-trailersto transport water for the frac jobs to and from the well sites, in addition to all of the heavy equipment used andother supplies needed to drill these huge wells, not to mention the daily traffic of the workers traveling back and

forth. (Courtesy Wetzel County Action Group, www.wcag-wv.org)


19/26

Damaged Bridge

This bridge had its railing knocked off by well drilling activity and continues to be overloaded by the heavy truck traffic.

(Courtesy Upshur County member of WV-SORO)


20/26

Local Access Route

This is major traffic artery through Wetzel County. The road must accommodate local traffic, in addition to heavy truckstransporting water, equipment and other supplies to Marcellus Shale drilling sites.



21/26

Road Damage

This is a state road damaged by many heavy trucks traveling to Marcellus Shale drilling sites. You can tell which sideof the road the trucks use when going to the well with heavy loads. The other side, where they come back empty,is undamaged. (Courtesy Wetzel County Action Group, www.wcag-wv.org)


22/26

Road Damage

The trucks are so heavy and frequent that they press down and push the center of the driving lanes up so they almostcatch the bottoms of passenger cars. (Courtesy Wetzel County Action Group, www.wcag-wv.org)


23/26

Truck Accident

The roads are not designed to handle the heavy traffic they are getting. This fully loaded Diesel fuel truck that ran offthe road when it met a convoy coming down the hill in the opposite direction.



24/26

Truck Accident

Inadequate roads can cause serious road accidents. (Courtesy Wetzel County Action Group, www.wcag-wv.org)


25/26

Marshall County Well Fire

The damage the land and roads is bad enough. Without proper oversight, other more dangerous accidents are morelikely to happen. A fire burns at Chesapeake Energys McDowell B well near Cameron in Marshall County. Thefire and explosion at the site on Sept. 20, 2010, was the third situation at a gas drilling site in the county sinceJune. The fire burned for more then a week. (Courtesy Wetzel County Action Group, www.wcag-wv.org)


26/26

Conclusion

Our state is facing this new industrialization of rural West Virginia with regulatory statuteshave not been modified in decades, and a staff that is already 6,000 wells behind in forcing drillersto plug played out wells (not counting 13,000 wells that have become orphaned with no one to

plug them because we did not require them to be plugged before the operator went out ofbusiness). There are only 17 inspectors for 55,000 active wells, the played out/orphaned wellsmentioned above and 900 to 3,000 new permit applications a year. Not all of these will be drilled,but those that are should have multiple visits by inspectors to prevent erosion and streamsedimentation, damage to groundwater and other pollution. West Virginia needs to overhaul andmodernize of its oversight of gas well drilling, and commit significantly more resources to addressthe impacts of this industrialization.

Documents

The industrialization of rural West Virginia caused by the Marcellus Shale gas play