Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
I'd donned steel-toed boots, a light blue i re-retardant coat, and plas-
tic safety glasses as I walked toward Neider 10-14-5 5H, a well being
drilled by Chesapeake Energy a few miles northeast of Carrollton. h e
mercury read eighty-nine degrees, but with diesel generators i ring
and the drill rig operating at full force, it felt like well over a hundred.
I'd been given a pair of l uorescent green earplugs to protect myself
from the hundred-decibel fury of the operation (think good seats at an
intense rock concert), but I pocketed them; I wanted the full sensory
experience.
h e rig, more than ten stories tall, held a drill that had already bored
several thousand feet underground. Now the drill was turning. Slowly,
with the operator at a panel of electronic controls and another het y
man who introduced himself as Tar Baby (“i rst name Tar, last name
Baby”) watching over his shoulder, the giant machine fed slightly curved
pipe down the well. Deep underground, the borehole was beginning to
bend, and over the next few days, it would i nish a full ninety-degree
twist, ending up parallel to the earth's surface but more than six thou-
sand feet down in the heart of the Utica shale. By the time drilling was
complete, the well would extend sideways another i ve thousand feet.
h en the rig would move, and a procession of trucks would come in.
h e well would be pumped full of water, sand, and a proprietary mix
of chemicals, and fracked.
If Chesapeake was lucky, the well would spit back much of the
water and then start gushing a mix of natural gas and liquids that
were similar to oil. John Neider, at i t y-three, would hit the jack-
pot, too: having leased his farmland to the gas company, he'd be in
line for a big royalty check, just like the one he collected when the
company successfully drilled its i rst well on his property barely a
year before.
2
h at well was just the third in Ohio to produce natural gas and valu-
able oil-like liquids from the deep shale. h e i rst had started producing
on June 14, 2011, a year to the week before my visit. It initially pumped
out 9.5 million cubic feet of natural gas and 1,425 barrels of oil and
other liquid fuels every day.
3
Neider's wells didn't quite measure up, but
by most industry yardsticks they still scored as a smashing success. So
did properties as far away as Texas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, and, just
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