| Popis: |
Large drill rigs, earthmovers, tons of gravel, and dozens of hauling, monitoring, and pump trucks are needed to drill and frack a well, but these are only temporary. Nevertheless, well construction can be quite disruptive to the neighborhood. Oil and gas drilling of both conventional and unconventional wells is a 24 hours per day, seven days a week business. Crews live in trailers on site, and work around the clock in 12-hour shifts. The noise, lights, and traffic ensure that anyone living across the street from one of these operations is not going to get much sleep. Shale gas and tight oil wells require a standard pad size of about five acres (2 ha) to provide room for equipment and materials to carry out drilling and fracking operations. During a boom period when operators are pushing to get as many wells in the ground as possible, the construction of pads, access roads, and pipelines can be extremely hectic, not carefully planned, and poorly executed by hastily recruited, inexperienced crews. Many local residents of areas that received the brunt of these construction booms are still seething a decade later about the environmental damage done to their landscapes in the name of profit. Engaging local citizens and governments in pre-planning and communication prior to drilling and fracking shale wells can provide a valuable “social license” for a company to operate. Activities like flaring stranded gas, injecting produced water down disposal wells, constructing large, impervious pads in sensitive watersheds, and bulldozing access roads up stream valleys all require discussions with local citizens, who may be able to suggest viable alternatives that allow fracking while protecting the landscape. |
