So It's Just Going To Be 2000 Acres, Eh?
[READ CORRECTION TO THIS ARTICLE]
by BuzzFlash Reader Heather Wade
March 5, 2002
On the topic of the proposed oil drilling in the Alaskan Wildlife Refugee, I would like to share what I learned about HDD.
I spoke with this gentleman not to long ago. He was what some might call a typical Texan. He was a really nice fella; we talked about the proposed drilling in the Alaskan Wildlife Refugee.
When he got to that subject, I wanted to explain my displeasure of running a risk of ruining the refuge. I was quick to assume he was all for drilling. Considering he was an oil and cattleman from Central Texas.
Well, to my surprise, when the "drilling" word came up his face went sour. I was taken aback. He said, "It would be devastating if they did that!" He went on to tell me that he was a third generation oilman. He said "I am gonna tell you something that will surprise you. Do you know how they are going to drill for that oil?" Of course, I have no real clue. "They don’t just drill vertically nowadays," he said with cautious voice. "They go in side ways now," he said, "It’s called HDD."
[HDD = Horizontal Directional Drilling.]
He went on with an angry tone. He said he has seen large oil companies in Central Texas try to buy up people's land for drilling. If they refused to sell, the oil companies would just buy the property next to the one they wanted and drill sideways into the neighbor's land. The poor old guy would never know his neighbor was drilling underground sideways onto his property.
I told him, "Oh, no way." In disgust I closed my eyes and shook my head. I then said, "So, it’s not just going to be 2000 acres is it?" He said, "No it’s not and they’ll take all they can once they get in." He finished off the conversation with, "It’s not worth it." "There’s not even that much oil up there, to run the risk of ruining that wonderful place."
For an explanation and graphic of Horizontal Directional Drilling, look here:
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Buzzflash
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first off- i love the site, keep up the good work.
second off- Heather was a little mis-informed about HDD, and may have
confused it with "slant-drilling," the very real term for the
process that Mr. Burns used to suck out the oil from underneath Springfield
Elementary on "The Simpson's."
I am by no means a fan of drilling in ANWR, but when we use mis-information
to defend our point of view, it can weaken the whole argument.
Take a closer look at the HDD website that the letter linked to - since
you generally have to drill down to get to the oil, Horizontal Directional
Drilling is not about extracting the oil from the ground, but rather about
laying the pipelines that take the oil/gas to market. In ANWR, those pipelines
would all be above ground.
In the case of ANWR, if drilling is ultimately done, slant-drilling would
actually be a good thing...
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DyeHard/dyehard010222.html
...Techniques such as slant drilling allow the wells to be clustered closer together. When he worked as a "rough-neck" on the North Slope as a young man in the 1960s, Knowles says, a drilling pad took up 65 acres.
"Today, they're a tenth that size," he says.
So a smaller footprint means less impact, but it doesn't mean no impact at all. Any development will inevitably change one of the most pristine areas on the planet...
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