Marcellus Shale - Gas Wells

By Steve Mocarsky smocarsky@timesleader.com
Staff Writer
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FAIRMOUNT TWP. – Drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale is under way in Luzerne County as crews began at about 8:30 Wednesday night.

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Encana Oil & Gas began operating this natural gas drilling rig off Route 118 in Fairmount Township Wednesday night.

AIMEE DILGER/THE TIMES LEADER

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Employees perform their duties outside ‘the doghouse’ on natural gas drilling rig Thursday at well pad in Fairmount Township.

AIMEE DILGER/THE TIMES LEADER

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“We’re excited drilling is under way,” Wendy Wiedenbeck, community and public relations adviser for Encana Oil & Gas (USA), told The Times Leader on Thursday during a site visit.

“It’s been pretty smooth. There’s been a lot of activity, a lot of curious folks at the gate. A lot of folks expressed surprise that the rig is not larger or noisier,” Wiedenbeck said.

Hospital-grade noise mufflers are installed on the drill rig, and the five personnel trailers on site are positioned around the rig in a configuration to best mitigate noise pollution for neighbors, Wiedenbeck said.

The entrance to the Buda 1-H well pad is just a few hundred feet west of the Ricketts Glen Hotel off state Route 118. Ricketts Glen State Park is located just across Route 118, and Cook’s Campground is less than a mile from the well pad.

Noise-level tests were conducted Thursday morning 350 feet from the edge of the pad. The noise level measured 53 decibels, which is the level of a normal conversation, Wiedenbeck said.

Bill Bender, Encana’s environmental, health and safety lead, said on-site personnel had a safety meeting before the start of drilling to do a job safety analysis.

“We looked at potential safety concerns and how to eliminate those concerns,” Bender said.

There are about 15 people working on-site at any given time, including a five-member drilling crew, two Encana supervisors and other subcontractors. Two Encana rig supervisors and a “tool pusher” – the drilling company’s head person – live on-site in the personnel trailers.

Bender said inspectors from the state Department of Environmental Protection were also on-site Thursday morning meeting with the drilling supervisors. DEP inspectors also were there on Friday and Monday when the rig was being set up, according to DEP spokesman Mark Carmon.

Bender pointed out a heavy-duty plastic liner covering the ground around the drill rig with a foam berm around the edge to help contain any accidental leaks or spills of fluids. A higher earthen berm surrounds the entire pad except for the width of the entrance road.

Members of the press were restricted to a viewing area near the entrance to the well pad. A catch basin for drilling fluid behind the rig was not visible from that area.

Wiedenbeck said a tour of the whole site is being arranged for early August.

Bender also pointed out five monitoring wells that Encana drilled just off the pad as part of the company’s hydrological study. The wells are now used to monitor groundwater levels utilizing a pressure transducer and an automated data logger, he said.

Drilling operations are expected to continue 24 hours a day, seven days a week for about a month. After drilling a vertical well bore about 5,000 to 7,000 feet deep and a horizontal lateral up to 5,000 feet into the shale, the completion stage, which includes hydraulic fracturing to release the gas from the shale, will begin.

After the drilling stage, rig operator Horizontal Well Drillers, of Purcell, Okla., will transport the rig to Encana’s next exploratory well site – a parcel of land off Zosh Road in Lake Township owned by Amy and Paul Salansky.

Wiedenbeck would not say how deep drilling had progressed as of Thursday afternoon.