Let's Start Looking at Some Gas Drilling Reality Folks

Well Spacing
Marcellus wells require a 640 acre, square mile pool, in which a central drilling pad area can support as many as 8 initial lateral wells and two to three years later pads can be placed on the edge to place additional wells to reached under the initial pad area..

Well Pad Size
When hydrofracked and drilled horizontally, Marcellus wells require large, industrial pad sites. Depending on how many well heads it contains, a pad will range from 5-15 acres and will necessarily include access and service roads.

Noise
Like all natural gas production, Marcellus wells have temporary noise pollution from drilling and fracking 24/7 that will last about a month per well not including the time to make the pad area ponds etc. In addition, compressor stations will be needed for every 100 or so wells, to bring the gas pressure in gathering lines up to that of larger pipelines. Compressor stations are permanent, extremely noisy, and run day and night.

Traffic
All gas development creates traffic in rural areas. The large scale of development planned for the Marcellus, and the fact that it must be fracked, translates to dramatic increases in traffic compared to that generated by drilling conventional wells. One well service company, Gas Field Specialists, uses tanker trucks that can carry 5,460 gallons of fluid. If one well requires 2 million gallons of water for one fracking, that’s 366 tanker trucks hauling fresh water and 183 tanker trucks hauling waste water, for a total of 549 tanker truck trips per well, per fracking. For the average fracking, which may take 3.5 million gallons, that is 960 tanker truck trips. In Pensylvania, the DEP estimates that one horizontal Marcellus well requires 1,000 truck trips during drilling and fracking.

Air Pollution
Each well site emits air pollution. In addition to pollution from diesel generators, drill rigs, trucks and other equipment, condensate tanks and the flaring of wells are significant sources of VOC’s and nitrogen oxide, which react with sunlight to form ozone. Proposed Marcellus Shale drilling in New York will be high density. In high-density drilling areas in Colorado and Wyoming, rural communities that were once pristine now have ozone levels higher than Los Angeles. Ozone can cause a range of respiratory health problems and lung disease.

Lets do some math. Assume the the county is 940 square miles and that only ten percent is leased. That gives us 94 drilling pool pads times 8 wells. To me that is a huge impact.

Jim,
I agree that the financial benefits are significant - HOWEVER - are all the workers you mention having jobs presently living in Pocahontas County looking for a job? I don't think so. I know many employers here in the county who are desperate for employees and can't find them. Drilling will provide short-term jobs for people from Texas and Louisiana - and will keep our motels and restaurants busy for the same short term. What do we as a county do after the wells are drilled and gas workers have gone elsewhere. Gas pads and frack fluid holding ponds in the middle of our bottomland could destroy the future of agriculture; if the county looks, sounds, and smells like an industrial urban area, who will come here to get away?

"Abundant lower [cost] energy for our nation" is also an important goal- HOWEVER - we need to factor in the liquid natural gas plants presently coming on line in our ports so we can ship the gas from under Pocahontas County to Asia. Surely there are other ways to produce energy in the state, and maybe even the county, that are not destructive of what we have now.

martin where are the pads that are 5 to 15 acres and who built them and what gas company owns them.

Gotta agree with Janet. I want it (whatever energy source that may be) to be minimally invasive yet beneficial to our residents, mindful of the rights of property owners, and attentive to the direction that the National Forest representatives are thinking about. Sounds almost impossible, but our community is blessed with many creative thinkers as well as tireless volunteers. Given the right forum and with the understanding of the magnitude of the issue facing the community as a whole, it can be hashed out. Just hope that we can mobilize soon for the benefit of all.

my son lives in tioga pa. and works for gas field specialist.two other men from marlinton used to work for them but they got a job with another company doing gas field work.their job was to build access roads and drill pads.a lot of the pads they built were 250 by 250 ft. which is @1.43 acres to around 400 by 400 which is @3.67 acres .tioga is one of the hot spots for gas drilling in pa but i didn't see all the gloom and doom that you talk about.the roads that i drove on were in good shape.people were boating on tioga lake and people were riding on a tourist train outside of tioga .while some people can find the worst in anything i didn't see anything that i thought was bad and i consider myself a conservationist.

The size of the wave:

West Virginia Northern Panhandle Leasehold

As of August, 2010 Chesapeake had in excess of 100,000 acres leased in West Virginia's northern panhandle including the aforementioned acreage in Wheeling's Oglebay Park. http://www.waytogoto.com/wiki/index.php/Chesapeake_Energy

And this is their total number in all states:
Chesapeake Energy has 1.55 million net acres in the Marcellus Shale, with proved reserves of 460 Bcfe (using the 10 year average strip pricing). The company recently raised its estimated ultimate recovery (EUR) per well from 4.2 Bcfe to 5.2 Bcfe.

I feel very agreeable today.

I agree with Jim and welcome gas drilling if it is “done in a safe manner.” Unfortunately, the gas companies have so much money that they can rent many of our state legislators and bully the DNR. Profit-centered gas companies call the shots. Drilling will be done cheap and dirty unless we hold our state legislators accountable.

I agree that we need the income, but not at the cost of our long-term economy. If our water isn’t pure and our scenery isn’t unspoiled our major long-term source of revenue -- visitors -- will go away. Then what?

I agree with Janet -- we don’t eat, breath or drink gas. Cheap energy won’t mean much in a world where we need machines to purify every breath of air, sip of water and bite of food.

I agree with ‘been here’ that drilling for gas may be a fine idea -- in Tioga County, Pennsylvania. Since 1859 that state has been punched through by so many wells that a few more can’t possibly matter. Tioga County’s largest city is named “Wellsboro”! And the first Marcellus reference on the Wellsboro Chamber of Commerce’s web site is a Penn State study: “although development of (Marcellus shale) is having a positive economic impact in the state, the net benefits may be more modest than previously reported...”

I agree with ‘freeholder’ that all citizens should benefit from the development of a state’s natural resources. The first sentence in the U.S. Constitution says our government’s job is to “promote the general Welfare.” The Constitution does not say that government’s job is to reserve the benefits of economic growth to a privileged few.

And I agree with freeholder that it is unfair for the state to charge the average citizen a higher tax rate than it charges billionaire gas companies.

The only posting that I dislike with is from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. It states that the Gastar corporation owns a “salt water disposal well” here or in a neighboring county. Disposal wells were meant for natural salt water from traditional gas wells. Apparently, behind the scenes, someone has “repurposed” the wells for disposal of toxic fluids from fracking operations. How is a company allowed to inject contaminated water into somebody else’s water supply? In the good old days, poisoning a well was a hanging offense. -- Rich