for "Bonded"

for "Hooters"

for "Night Patrol"

for "On a Dare"

for "Best Journal (Overall)"

Daily Sights

our Honeymoon view

a tall mountain

a tall tower

a comic strip


powered by SignMyGuestbook.com

Want an email when I update?
email:
Powered by NotifyList.com

Newest
Older
Previous
Next
Random
Contact
Profile
Host

blizzard warnings - 13:52 , 03 October 2013

heelerless - 21:32 , 18 August 2013

Red Coat Inn in Fort McLeod - 11:38 , 23 June 2013

rushing into the waters - 09:53 , 21 June 2013

choosing a spot - 17:43 , 27 April 2013

04 June 2008 - 23:59

digging for gas

And now for Part 3 of an unplanned three-part series on energy development in this part of the world...

Digging for natural gas. By far the biggest boom in this area for the past twenty years. Or, as some would say, the biggest boon. (Depending on where your paycheck comes from, and how much you enjoy the outdoor world.)

Yesterday's pronghorn surveys started us in the middle of the largest gas field around.

Twenty miles later, and we were still in it. Most of what you're looking at up there is 80-acre spacing, or eight wells per square mile.

They want to go down to 40-acre spacing. Or closer. More than twice as many wells. Other fields have gone down to 10-acre or 5-acre well spacing. Biologists in those areas decry the destruction but really, once you drop down below 20-acres, is there anything left to save?

I irritate them by pointing out 5-acre spacing in their fields is a good thing. There are a limited number of drilling rigs available in the world...

so the more drilling rigs they have up in their country, the fewer there are to drill down here in mine.

Oddly enough, there may eventually be a limit to the number of wells drilled. And that limit seems to be coming not from all the habitat and wildlife that is lost, but by...

air pollution. Each drilling rig

has to have one or more waste pits to catch the oil and sludge contaminated water from drilling. The volatile compounds evaporate away into the atmosphere.

Most are supposed to pump out this waste water and retrieve the hydrocarbons, but that's expensive. Easier to ignite the pits, preferably in the early morning hours, to flare the waste away as smoke.

Whether it's legal or not. We saw two pits flaring in just one flight.

How large of a carbon footprint is that?

Add to that the dust

and compressor and pipeline stations

and it is easy to see why these little survey flags for the next new well

are more a death knell than an engineering accomplishment.

( 0 comments on this entry )
previous entry || next entry
member of the official Diaryland diaryring: next - prev - random - list - home - Diaryland
the trekfans diaryring: next - prev - random - list - home
the goldmembers diaryring: next - prev - random - list - home
the onlymylife diaryring: next - prev - random - list - home
the unquoted diaryring: next - prev - random - list - home
the quoted diaryring: next - prev - random - list - home
the redheads diaryring: next - prev - random - list - home