Oil and Gas Wells in the Vicinity of Lake Worth, TX
Tim –
Re: your youtube video: http://youtu.be/tUOuw-4NFsc
I thought at first you were posting the “burning water” scene from Gasland. (Now *that’s* propaganda.)
But instead it’s your attempt to debunk an educational video from the American Petroleum Institute which shows industry’s ability to drill multiple wells from a single site.
Somehow, you interpreted it to mean “No more wells!” How you concluded that is anybody’s guess — nowhere did API claim that wells are no longer needed, just that with modern techniques, it is possible to drill multiple wells with minimal impact on, for example, freeways, lakes and residential subdivisions.
In fact, the map above was paid for with your tax dollars. It is from the Railroad Commission of Texas, the statewide oil and gas regulatory body. The are may look familiar to you, as it is the same area that you used in your video, where you unmasked API’s “lie”, apparently because there are 3 wells near your neighborhood.
Now look at the map, in particular your three wells. The pentagon-shaped symbols on the map correspond with the wells’ surface locations. The black lines emanating from the symbols represent a well path. The “bottomhole location” of each well is represented by a symbol which tells you something about that well. Most of these are gas wells in the Newark, East (Barnett Shale) Field, which spans several counties in and around Ft. Worth.
Your three locations support 2, 3 and 4 producing wells, respectively — a total of 9 — which was precisely the point of the API video: new technology, smaller “footprints”. And they were talking about places like Ft. Worth, Tim. Directional and horizontal drilling technology has enabled development of gas in and near your freeways, lakes and residential subdivision.
The Newark, East (Barnett Shale) Field is the #2 gas producer in the nation (only recently displaced as #1). As a result, lots of homeowners in suburban Ft. Worth receive nice monthly royalty checks because of their ownership of the minerals under their property.
Now, if you’re not receiving one of those monthly checks, it may be that you haven’t been drilled yet, or your land has not been placed in a producing unit. Or the seller may have retained the minerals when you purchased your house. Are you pissed because you’re not receiving a check? (And if you are receiving a check, I hope you’re not cashing it; otherwise you’re a huge hypocrite.)
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I think what Tim was clear about was the discrepancy between the API commercial (not an educational video) that there would be fewer (not none as you exaggerated) wells because of this new method of drilling, and how in just 4 years there were 3 new wells near his home despite this new method. Following a logical projection, there could be another 3 wells nearby in the next few years, using the same methods.
As for you suggesting that he’s a huge hypocrite if he receives a mineral rights check, does getting compensation mean that he can’t point out a misleading claim by API? Its funny that some feel money is the ultimate justification. That seems to be a perspective of another whore to the oil industry. I’m sorry you feel so threatened by his little You Tube video but have no problem with a well funded ad campaign by API.
Tim lives atop the #2 gas field in the United States. Tim pointed out the existence of 3 gas wells in his neighborhood as some kind of contradiction of the API video. My rebuttal is not that there are 3 wells near his house, there are closer to 12, thanks to horizontal drilling techniques. There are only 3 well pads, so the industry has figured out how to minimize its footprint. That was precisely the message of the API video.
A good number of homeowners in the Ft. Worth area receive monthly royalty payments, and I bet most of them are happy about it.
FYI Tim has called me a liar publicly and
suggestedstated that everything I say is biased because I get an oil company paycheck. I fully disclose my education, my experience and my employment: Caveat emptor. But consider this: my company does not engage in horizontal drilling and we do not engage in the kind of fracking techniques that have become so controversial. Those techniques have been so successful that they have driven the price of natural gas to historic lows relative to oil, to my personal detriment. The truly self-serving act on my part would be to shut up & stop trying to educate people on the subject of shale gas drilling.Same with ANWR, deepwater oil, opening the Eastern Gulf, Atlantic & Pacific OCS. A true whore would STFU and let the NIMBYs, the greenies and the watermelons have their way.