Drill Site Visual: From Concept to Fruition in the Tidaghton

Williamsport, Pa., used to be most known for housing the Little League World Series. Now it's known for Marcellus shale drilling. Back in October, we sent a crew there to find out how the drilling industry has affected all aspects of life since it first hit nearly five years ago. Our hopes were to show the Valley what it might expect as gas companies begin leasing and drilling our own Utica shale formation.

You can find out about what we learned and read the personal stories of Williamsport residents in the series of articles under the Living with the Gas Rush tab. There's also an extensive list of other stories, video and images featuring anything from leasing and the environment to the economy and transportation on this Shale News webpage.

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Click the "Slide Show" link above to view images of different steps of the drilling process at an active site in Pennsylvania's Tiadaghton State Forest.

Tiadaghton State Forest is about 215,000 acres, mostly in Lycoming County, Pa., dotted with forests, streams and mountains; some parts are so high up, they’re in the clouds.

At the base are communities, like Waterville -- population 124 -- with general stores, ball fields, expansive farms and tiny post offices.

Underneath it is Marcellus shale.

Dirt roads lead into the forest. Most are less than a few years old, lined with trees cut down to lead the way to thousands of acres of land being leased by the gas industry. You can tell when you reach a drilling site; each one has its own mailbox.

"Each well has to have a 911 address," explained Mary Wolf, former Williamsport mayor and current liaison with Anadarko Petroleum Corporation.

The Basics of Drilling
This particular site in the Tiadaghton involves 15,000 acres and five leases.

But drilling can be done in nearly any environment: on farmland, in neighborhoods or on state game lands and parks.

The process of finding a site that holds promise, to drilling the land, to producing and transporting natural gas can take over a year.

"Coming up with the concept is easy," said Wolf. "Bringing it to fruition is another thing."

Officials say each company drills differently. Some install one well on a well pad. Others, like Anadarko, typically drill six. They all take up different amounts of space depending on who they are delivering the gas to, and each have different policies, procedures and layouts on their drilling operations.

"Every play we get into...we have to look at each situation on its own," said Scott Chesebro, engineering manager at Anadarko Petroleum Corporation's Williamsport office. "We certainly bring the same criteria to that, but we want to understand what the situation is and then develop our own program."

But once it's in place, production of natural gas from just one well can last anywhere from 20 to 50 years.

Leasing and Surveying
Before drilling can even begin, a gas company must lease the land that contains the natural gas. In Pennsylvania alone, there are 39 negotiable aspects of a land lease, and this stage can take four to six months to complete.

Land can be leased from private landowners, municipalities, state parks or even state forests like the Tiadaghton.

Once a lease is signed, a gas company can then begin exploration, or finding areas of land that show the most promise for gas production.

This is done mostly through seismic testing, which provides a map of sorts of the shale rock underneath the ground, how deep it is and which parts of it hold the most natural gas.

Exploration and testing alone last about four months.

Site preparation
This is the most active stage of the process and can last up to two months.

Before a well can be drilled, a gas company must first clear space for access roads to and from the site. This involves moving dirt and can involve removing trees. The roads are then graded to make way for truck access.

Also part of this stage is the laying of pipeline. This piping transports the natural gas from the well to a gas production unit, which changes the pressure and heat of the natural gas. The gas flows to a gas meter station where it's counted and measured before being sent out to customers.

A well pad is constructed, and the actual drilling rig is hauled to the site.

"It looks like a space machine," said Brian Cain, Anadarko spokesperson.

Drilling
Six wells is a typical number per pad in horizontal shale play, said Chesebro. It takes about 20 days to drill one well. So at the site in Tiadaghtan, it would take about four months to get all six drilled on a well pad.

Typical well pad size for Anadarko is 3.67 acres, but that can vary among companies.

"One of the best things about this technology and what it will let us do in shale plays like Marcellus and Utica is that it's much different than the old-conventional drilling style that occurred in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Those were vertical wells, so each well required its own well pad," said Chesebro. "With the advent of horizontal drilling and the way we can fracture those wells, we can cover a larger area from a single pad."
 
As the well is drilled, the well casing is also installed. The casing is made of cement, and encases the sides and bottom of the hole drilled so it’s sealed to prevent leaks into the earth.

Hydraulic Fracturing
Some companies may also construct impoundment ponds, either on a drilling site or close to a drilling site. Anadarko has one of these ponds in its Tiadaghton forest site. It takes up about 13 acres, nine of which are filled with 16.6 million gallons of fresh and rainwater that is used for hydraulic fracturing.

This water is transported to the actual well to be used in the hydraulic fracturing to cut down on truck traffic and trips to and from other water sources. Hydraulic fracturing itself can last up to four days per well.

During this process, nearly three to five million gallons of the water and other materials are pumped into each well.

This forces small explosions underground to create holes in the shale so that gas can be released. Most of the water is then pumped out of the well, and a permanent well head is installed so natural gas collection can begin.

Reclaiming of Land
This stage lasts about two weeks, and it involves restoring the land as closely as possible to the way it looked before the gas company drilled.

This involves replacing topsoil and growing grass; anything that would restore the land as closely as possible to its original state.

"Vertical wells were smaller in size," said Chesebro. "But there were more of them. So, while this is a 15,000-acre development, all the land with the drill pads, pipelines and roads, we disturb less than two percent of the land to drain that entire acreage."

Sometimes, a company will agree to other changes.

For example, Wolf said that when Anadarko is finished with one of the well sites in the Tiadaghton, they promised PA Department of Conservation and Natural Resources that they would convert it to a wetlands environment.

“The entire process is very lengthy,” said Chesebro. “And it varies from region to region.”