Oil and Gas Well Question?

[Beaners]

We received a card in the mail asking us to list our water sources for our property. It says that an oil and gas well is going to be located within 1000 feet of our house. Our house is hooked up to city water. But we were planning on using the cistern and shallow well to water the garden this summer after we tested it, and as a back-up for the house for emergencies.

I know there are a few people here who have oil or gas wells on their own property, can anyone tell me what effect this will have on my property, if any? Should I list our shallow well under water supply? Is there anything I need to know about?

Kayleigh

[WayneR]

Kayleigh,
Use caution, as the information you supply could result in a visit from your health department. There will be concerns raised concerning cross contamination with the central water supply.

Do the drillers expect to contaminate the ground water? That would affect your lawn, gardens and trees as well as anything (or anyone) eating anything produced in the area.

It should be the responsibility of the driller to insure the ground water is not contaminated.

You may prefer to have a series of PRIVATE tests done now and documented, prior to the oil well being drilled. If problems present themselves in future you have proof of an actionable claim.

You might want to investigate the mineral rights to your property. As is is relatively close to you, it may be time for another well. How much of the oil and gas could be siphoned off of your property by the proposed well? The 'find' is probably substantial, considering placing a well in this economy with present energy costs.

[fordy]

..............I would not transmit any info thru the mail ! Around here Cheasapeake , will erect large rectangular sound absorbing panels , some 20 feet tall too reduce the impact of the noise of drilling operations upon property owners in close proximity too the rig . They should be willing to do the Same , or more , for you . OTOH , they never spend more money than they have too ! Make your concerns (demands) known and be prepared to hire an attorney should it become necessary . , fordy

[tamsam]

Pictures of anything close to the side o your property that the well is going on. Also gaurd your drive as most of the trucks going to and from the well think they can run over anything they want to. If you see them doing something that isn't right take pictures. Most are more afraid of a camera than a gun. I don't know about how your land lays but be ready for mud as they will use a dozer to drag trucks in and out of the drilling site. Good luck and yes they are noisy. Sam

[Beaners]

Hmmm. I don't think there is enough room on our property for a well, our lot is half an acre. I think the well is going in on the property behind us, which is around 20 acres. They had been bulldozing a trail to the top of a ridge on their property during the fall, possibly for bringing in equipment?

I want to make sure that our water and property isn't contaminated in any way, which is why I was going to mark down the shallow water well on our property. I know our well (and maybe cistern?) are listed with the municipality already, I noticed it on the paperwork when we bought the house. We are hooked up to city water though, and that is on file too. I'm not sure how expensive it would be to have our groundwater privately tested. If that is something we definitely need to do though, then I guess it will have to be done.

I'm really not looking to start a fight with the neighbors over this, we are new to the area and so far they have seemed nice enough. I think having a lawyer on retainer for this would be outside of our ability right now. How common is it for there to be problems with these kinds of things? There are a lot of wells in the area, we probably pass five or six just going from our house to the feed store. I was thinking that this wouldn't be a big deal.

What are things that they shouldn't be doing, that I should take note of if I see? How long do they usually drill for? They seem to be in the planning stages still, they need the water source information to file an application. We have a baby coming sometime this month. Ordinarily some noise wouldn't bother me, but I get the feeling this is going to start up right when the baby gets into some kind of sleep pattern.

Kayleigh

[ksfarmer]

You don't say who the card is from. Probably the information is needed so your water supplies can be monitored to make sure there is no contamination from the well. If you don't list your shallow well and it isn't monitored, you will not know until it is too late.

[Beaners]

It is a company "conducting a survey to determine the source of water supplies used in your general area. We will be submitting an application to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources, Oil and Gas Division, for the purpose of drilling an oil and gas well that will be located within 1000 feet of your dwelling." That's what the card says.

I suppose I can try to call their office and see what I would need to do to make sure that my well will be alright to use in the future, even if it isn't our primary water source.

Kayleigh

[ksfarmer]

Originally Posted by Beaners

It is a company "conducting a survey to determine the source of water supplies used in your general area. We will be submitting an application to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources, Oil and Gas Division, for the purpose of drilling an oil and gas well that will be located within 1000 feet of your dwelling." That's what the card says.

I suppose I can try to call their office and see what I would need to do to make sure that my well will be alright to use in the future, even if it isn't our primary water source.

Kayleigh

I would think that is what you should do. And, I would not say that you don't use the shallow well or cistern as your primary water source, for all they know the city water is your backup.

[Alice In TX/MO]

Absolutely get a water test. There is no way to "be sure your water well will be all right." Stuff happens. Underground blowouts happen. Stuff gets spilled. Get documentation NOW in case some of the bad stuff happens.

Absolutely find out who owns the mineral rights on your land. You may be entitled to income if the oil/gas well produces. They usually 'pool' the reserves. That means they estimate whose land the producing zone is under and if it's yours and you own the minerals, you get money. This is good stuff that can happen.

How long they drill is determined by how deep the well is supposed to be and how many things go wrong during the drilling process. Could be anywhere from a couple of weeks to six months.

Hubby's a registered petroleum engineer, and I've spent many a night on the drilling locations. I sleep better there due to the constant hum of generators, etc. Sort of like the ocean.

[The Paw]

Originally Posted by Beaners

Hmmm. I don't think there is enough room on our property for a well, our lot is half an acre. I think the well is going in on the property behind us, which is around 20 acres. They had been bulldozing a trail to the top of a ridge on their property during the fall, possibly for bringing in equipment?

I want to make sure that our water and property isn't contaminated in any way, which is why I was going to mark down the shallow water well on our property. I know our well (and maybe cistern?) are listed with the municipality already, I noticed it on the paperwork when we bought the house. We are hooked up to city water though, and that is on file too. I'm not sure how expensive it would be to have our groundwater privately tested. If that is something we definitely need to do though, then I guess it will have to be done.

I'm really not looking to start a fight with the neighbors over this, we are new to the area and so far they have seemed nice enough. I think having a lawyer on retainer for this would be outside of our ability right now. How common is it for there to be problems with these kinds of things? There are a lot of wells in the area, we probably pass five or six just going from our house to the feed store. I was thinking that this wouldn't be a big deal.

What are things that they shouldn't be doing, that I should take note of if I see? How long do they usually drill for? They seem to be in the planning stages still, they need the water source information to file an application. We have a baby coming sometime this month. Ordinarily some noise wouldn't bother me, but I get the feeling this is going to start up right when the baby gets into some kind of sleep pattern.

Kayleigh

If the municipality already knows about your well and cistern, there is no down side to telling the oil/gas company. If you fail to tell them now, you may be estopped from claiming compensation from them later if they render your well unusable.

I would test now to establish the water quality. And if you play your cards right, the company might end up paying for future water tests as a condition of their drill permit.

[Darren]

Try to find out which formation the well will tap. If it's going to the Marcellus shale it will be a bigger rig and a bigger well location. They'll have to create a settlement pond for the dust and liquid that comes up from the well. Ask them for a topo map showing the site location. You can get a better idea of what you will be dealing with. For example if the location is on the side of a hill facing away from you, I wouldn't expect any problems. I would look for surface runoff issues if your property is downhill from the well location. If you have a small creek you can see if the well location and access road will drain into it.

[wr]

Up here in the frozen north, companies can't even get a license to drill until they have met certain standards and one of the fairly new regulations requires protection of groundwater so anyone within 1000m of a proposed well well will either meet with an environmental consultant and have a pre drilling water well test or can have the test done on their own but it is in your best interests to declare the well and have it tested. Our ww testing program has yet to turn up any incidents where a well has harmed water but in quite a few cases, it did turn up cases where landowners have been drinking from unsafe wells. Often cases of old wells that had not been properly maintained.

I would advise that you contact a representative or complete the card and return it. I would think that if you didn't and did experience problems with your water, you would have no legal recourse.

[65284]

From your 2nd post, ("They had been bulldozing a trail to the top of a ridge on their property during the fall, possibly for bringing in equipment?") it sounds like you might be downhill from the work area.

So, if indeed, you are downhill from the drill site here's no telling what might be washed onto your place if it comes a rainy spell while they are working. Some contaminants, diesel fuel, hydraulic fluid, grease, oil, etc., WILL leak, or be spilled from heavy equipment during normal working activities and the refueling process.

Those little plastic fabric dams and straw bale barricades that are erected to control erosion and contain pollution aren’t always effective.

Take pictures of your whole place, you might also consider taking soil samples from several different areas of the property, put them in a CLEAN container with a description, identification number and picture of where each sample was collected; seal the container, then store the samples with enclosed pictures offsite.


Perhaps a bit of overkill, but it won't cost much and those soil samples and pics might be invaluable if you needed to prove your land had been damaged by toxic runoff from the well site. If you are unfortunate enough to get gunked it would be nice to have evidence it wasn't there before they started working.

[Beaners]

Our property is about 150 ft deep, and 150 ft wide. It is almost entirely level. Behind us it is flat for another 250 ft, then it goes up the slope to where they were bulldozing. That flat area is all brush and grasses, it isn't bare soil. The hill also angles a bit, so it isn't facing directly toward our property. On the eastern side, between our property and the same neighbor's property (they border us on two sides) there is a small stream that flows from somewhere else on their property and eventually drains into a larger creek nearby.

So we are downhill, but I think we would be more at risk of runoff leaching onto our property from that stream than directly from the site.

Kayleigh

[Darren]

Everything they discharge from the location should go into a lined pit. That material will be removed along with the liner and the pit excavation filled after the well is finished. As long as run-off from the access road doesn't impact you, you should be OK. You may see more dust than usual. Depending on how deep the target formation is and any drilling problems, the rig could be in and out in less than two weeks. If they're going to the Marcellus, the operation will take much longer and result in a lot more equipment moving in and out of the site. If there's a stream access point near that can be used to fill water trucks expect that to be a possible issue as far as traffic and potential mud in the stream.

[stanb999]

Beaners,

Here is what you do...

First supply the info to the driller. They will get it from the county too. This is just a follow up type thing. to make sure all the bases are covered.

Second,
Find out what they are drilling for.... This is critical. You want to know if it's coal bed methane or a deeper deposit. I'm figuring it's the coal bed methane.

If it's coal bed gas. Have your well tested for quality, clarity, flow rate, and minerals. Once in the spring and once in the summer at least. Get it done. Yes it will cost a bit of cash but you will be thankful if there is a problem. Just call the local office of the DNCR for their recommendations on who you should have come out and do it. It shouldn't cost an arm and a leg tho.

If it's a deep deposit. Have the water tested for mineral content, clarity, and potability.



If you do this you have documentation of the before and after. So if you notice a change or any issues your covered. Remember in a potential court case documentation trumps any beliefs or other such non-sense. The fact that your not using it for your primary water doesn't matter as far as the loss of water quality or quantity of your on site water. You Own it.... Read your Deed.

[EasyDay]

They often ask about water sources nearby because they need LOTS of water to drill. They buy it by the load from nearby farmers with ponds, if the pond is self-sustaining. Otherwise, they'll build a pond on someone for the use of the water... with the agreement of the property owner, of course. Saves them from having to haul from further away.

Water contamination isn't as much a threat as them fracturing your well. If your underground source is disturbed by the drilling, the water will divert, and your well will go dry.

If there's a phone number on the card, I'd call and ask questions. They aren't "up to no good", so should be more than happy to answer your concerns.

[EasyDay]

Originally Posted by stanb999

The fact that your not using it for your primary water doesn't matter as far as the loss of water quality or quantity of your on site water. You Own it.... Read your Deed.

You don't own the source, if it originates elsewhere.

[Michael W. Smith]

Beaner's, this isn't really any big deal. The company needs to know what your sources of water are BEFORE any drilling is done. This protects both you as well as the company doing the drilling.

Once they know what water sources you have, they will have a lab come and test the water and the lab will send out the reports to both the company and you. That way, if the drilling does affect your water there is proof - proof that your water was fine before the drilling, and proof for the drilling company that you don't come to them because the drilling "ruined" the water.

If the drilling does affect your water (which is unlikely), the drilling company is responsible to make things right.

I'm not sure how having public water affects this, but would assume that if you have a well, even if you can just switch to public water if something happens, they would still be responsible for fixing your well water to the condition it was before drilling.

The noise isn't really that bad. The drilling is the worst part but usually only last 3 - 5 days at most. However, they usually do have at least 2 drilling crews, so you can figure the drilling hours will be from 7:00 A.M. - 11:00 P.M., but they might work longer if they are almost finished.

[Woodsprite]

Hi, Beaners -

PLEASE have your well water tested first, and document everything you possibly can. Do a google search for "hydrofracking", which is probably what they're planning in your area. For what it's worth, I posted a rant about this some time last year:

Turns out being off the grid in the woods doesn't necessarily protect us from the ravages of the rest of the world. We've spent a good bit of the summer getting informed and speaking out on the latest threat to upstate NY: a HUGE boom in natural gas drilling. HUGE.

At least nine different companies are aggressively pursuing drilling rights in NY, PA, and the southern Appalachians, all of which are sitting on a layer of Marcellus Shale, which could meet the whole country's natural gas needs for two years.

However, extracting it requires a new drilling technique, called "hydrofracking", which is every bit as ugly as it sounds. The gas in Marcellus is held in bubbles like a chunk of swiss cheese. To extract it, a mixture of water, sand and chemicals is shot into the earth with such force it fractures the rock, releasing the bubbles to the surface. When the gas surfaces, so does the water...laden with natural toxins from the shale, including suspected cancer-causing compounds.

This is a technique that involves deeper, more complicated wells, and uses VASTLY more water than other drilling methods: two million gallons of water for each well! And where do you suppose that water will come from, if not from our water table?

The U.S. Department of Energy lists "produced water" from gas drilling as among the most toxic of any oil industry byproduct. The byproduct of each two million gallons of water ends up being 10,000 gallons of toxic chemicals. That's for ONE well. In New Mexico, oil and gas drilling projects that use waste pits, like those proposed for New York, have leached toxic chemicals into the water table at over 800 sites.

Best of all, the industry views its chemical recipes as trade secrets and they're not required to disclose them. States have only learned about the chemicals by analyzing waste pits and ground water nearby.

And of course, there is a whole "goon squad" of slick salespeople descending on us and all our neighbors, many of whom are struggling farmers or uneducated and underemployed rural folks. These slicksters describe the drilling as "underground horizontal drilling", as if a huge hypodermic needle will silently and invisibly slither beneath our land ("2 miles deep" they claim), draw the gas out, and leave the land untouched. The promise enormous lease payments, and show up on doorsteps with contracts in hand. It's absolutely terrifying.

So there's the cheery news from our little slice of paradise.