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Over
the past few months we've examined a number of wells in Putnam
and Kanawha counties in West Virginia. We
found problems in a number of areas related to issues of maintenance
and noncompliance with state and federal regulations.
Initially,
the pages in this section were meant to offer a fuller description
of each well for our comments to the application for Raymond
City #17. We've separated the Gas Well Study from our comments
and have been slowly making it public. Several people viewed
the draft Study and made suggestions. Copies of the Study's
link have been in the hands of the state's Office of Oil and
Gas, people at the company itself, and a director of one of
the two state industry organizations. Since the problems we
examine in the Study aren't peculiar to this one particular
company, we've been pressing for action to correct the issues
which we believe were created by lack of knowledge.
Go
to a page with information about downloading the Gas Well
Study.
Links
to the individual wells by their groups are on the right-hand
side panel, and also below.
Overwhelmingly,
problems we saw fell in several categories. Most well access
roads were in need of repair. (We have a web page showing
problems at a single well access road.)
A large number of wells had tanks without secondary containment
dikes as required by state regulations. Other problems observed
include lack of maintenance (generally a need of a coat of
paint), presence of trash or industrial debris, and about
a third of the wells had either no API number, required by
state regulations, or the wrong API number.
One
troubling aspect was the poor vegetation (or utter lack of
vegetation in one case) at a number of sites. This issue,
along with problems of drainage/sedimentation, means that
the operator is not following the state code mandated West
Virginia Erosion and Sediment Control Field Manual
during reclamation and for site and road maintenance during
the life of the well.
Go
to the first well.
2009
Gas Well Study
We're continuing with the Study and hope to include an environmental
assessment aspect for at least some of the well sites we visit
in 2009.
See
some of the gas well sites we've visited in 2009.
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