Posts Tagged ‘Joel Fox’

By Steve Mocarsky smocarsky@timesleader.com
Staff Writer

FAIRMOUNT TWP. – Having drilled 8,100 feet straight down into the earth beneath the Buda 1H Well Pad, Encana Oil & Gas is now preparing to begin the horizontal leg of the first Marcellus Shale natural gas well in Luzerne County.

Company officials on Thursday provided a tour of the well pad off state Route 118, out behind Ricketts Glen Hotel, explaining various parts of the drilling operations and noting extra safety measures employed, given the proximity to wetlands.

As an automatic pipe handler lifted 40-foot sections of drill pipe, each weighing about 650 pounds, from a storage area on the ground onto the drill rig, Encana operations engineer Joel Fox explained the purpose of some of the equipment used on-site.

“This is one of the modern rigs with an automated pipe handler. … In the old days, you had roughnecks out there handling that pipe, two or three guys muscling around, fighting that pipe. This system’s a lot safer,” Fox said.

Joining Fox were Encana operations engineer Ashley Lantz and environmental health and safety coordinator Jarrett Toms.

Toms said there have been no health or safety related issues on-site since the drilling began last month.

Fox showed some large steel pipe, called casing, stored there. Surface casing is run down into the well bore about 425 feet and is “what provides the protection of your fresh-water aquifers. That’s been run already and cemented,” he said.

He also showed intermediate casing, which is run down to 2,150 feet. The intermediate casing is cemented inside the surface casing, and cement is also pumped around the exterior pipe to prevent gas from seeping up the outside of the casing and into ground water.

A third string of steel casing – production casing – will be run into the total depth of the well after horizontal drilling is complete. The horizontal drilling begins by drilling a curved path from a vertical well bore to 90 degrees over a 900-foot span.

“The pipe is pretty flexible. It’s stiff and strong, but it will bend,” Fox explained.

During drilling, rock and drill bit cuttings must be removed from the well bore.

Fox pointed out pallets full of bags of chemicals that are mixed with synthetic food-grade drilling oil to make the drilling mud.

“It looks and feels like baby oil,” he said. Emulsifiers are added to the oil and water to make the mud viscous so it will carry the drill cuttings to the surface of the well for removal.

When drill cuttings come up, they’re cleaned, mixed with sawdust, stored in covered containers until tested by the state Department of Environmental Protection and then hauled off to a landfill.

Fox also noted there is no reserve pit to hold the cuttings at the Buda site.

“This is an entirely closed system. In other words, there are no open pits that you hear people talk about a lot in the newspaper. All fluids are contained in tanks; drill cuttings, fluid is all in tanks,” Fox said.

“We consulted with DEP, and because we’re in a wetlands area, a closed system made a lot of sense,” Fox said, even though a closed system is more expensive to operate than using a reserve pit.

It also made sense to use a closed system at the site because the water table is high in the area, so a pit could not be dug very deep, he said.

To protect the ground from potential spills of any fluids on-site, the part of the well pad under and around the drill rig and all of the tanks and equipment is covered with liners hung over berms that look like barricades, Fox explained.

“We call these duck ponds. If something gets spilled, it stays in there. And we have what looks like a large Shop-Vac device. So as soon as any fluid or rainwater gets on that liner, we can suck it up like a Shop-Vac in your basement,” he said.

Fox also pointed out four monitoring wells the company drilled at strategic locations between the site and Ricketts Glen Hotel, which has the nearest water well.

Also on-site are five trailers for office space and to house some staff. There are five people with the drilling contractor – Horizontal Well Drillers – plus two to five Encana employees, drilling specialists and contractors on-site at all times.

It should take 10 days to two weeks to drill the 3,500- to 4,000-foot horizontal leg of the well, also called the lateral, in a southeast direction. The company uses computerized equipment near the drill bit to make sure the well bore is going exactly in the direction the engineers want it to, Fox said.

“It’s like a GPS on the (drill) bit,” he said.

View article here.

Copyright:  The Times Leader

By Elizabeth Skrapits (Staff Writer)
Published: August 4, 2010

WILKES-BARRE – The Luzerne County Zoning Hearing Board on Tuesday night approved new natural gas wells and a facility for processing the gas, but added safety conditions.

Zoning hearing board members William Harris, Anthony Palischak and Chairman Lawrence Newman unanimously granted Encana Oil & Gas USA Inc. conditional use to drill five natural gas wells in an agricultural zone on the 4-P Realty property on Loyalville Road in Lake Township, as well as a natural gas processing facility that would include a compressor station and a radio tower.

Among the conditions the board imposed, Encana will have to determine whether the county’s emergency responders will be able to handle problems at the site, and to draw up a contingency plan to share with all concerned.

Encana will have to mitigate noise, light and dust at the site, as well as provide a traffic control plan, bond all county and municipal roads, and consider safety measures for school buses, such as having flagmen at bus stops.

The board also granted conditional approval on Encana’s request to drill three wells on the Kent North site at 208 State Route 118 in Fairmount Township, and two wells on the Kent South site at 27 State Route 487 in Fairmount Township.

The commissioners’ meeting room at the courthouse was jammed with people, many of whom expressed opposition to natural gas drilling.

Zoning hearing board Solicitor Stephen A. Menn repeatedly stressed that the state Oil and Gas Act does not allow local officials to regulate most aspects of natural gas well drilling, including how it is done and water use and protection.

“In what ways has the Oil and Gas Act tied your hands?” Factoryville resident Patrick Walker asked.

“Health, safety and welfare issues,” Menn said.

Like with methadone clinics and adult entertainment, zoning cannot exclude natural gas drilling, according to Menn.

“Drilling is a legal use. You have to put it somewhere,” Menn said.

The place people should seek change is Harrisburg, in laws passed by the General Assembly.

“I think it is an absolute horror, I think this is a version of fascism, that this power has been taken away from you,” Walker said.

Several residents questioned safety issues, such as the 6,800 additional trucks on the road throughout the well drilling process.

Lake-Lehman Transportation Coordinator Sandy Dobrowolski, speaking on her own behalf, expressed concern about the school buses being on the roads at the same time as the heavy traffic at the site.

Paul Ungvarsky, who lives on Loyalville Road about a mile from the 4-P property, asked if something could be done to ensure trucks don’t speed on the road. Encana Community Relations Adviser Wendy Wiedenbeck said it seemed like a reasonable request.

Ungvarsky also wanted to know what would happen if a property isn’t leased. He said his isn’t.

“If it’s unleased, we cannot drill under it,” Encana Operations Engineer Joel Fox said.

Linster added that Encana has “quite a bit of room to work with” on the 4-P site.

Mike Patrician of Clarks Summit, one of the 4-P property owners, spoke on Encana’s behalf, saying he had talked to five different companies at length about leasing.

“People are not all the same, gas companies are not all the same,” he said. “Encana has a stellar reputation in the industry.”

Gary Ide, who has leased his Lehman Township property, also defended Encana, stating that leaseholders were “extraordinarily impressed” with the company.

But Gene Stilp of Dauphin County, in referencing Patrician’s comment, said: “People are different, companies are different – frack water is pretty much the same.”

eskrapits@citizensvoice.com , 570-821-2072

View article here.

Copyright:  The Citizens Voice