Oilfield​

[Craig Miller]

They have to decide. Use your own money to seek damages or turn it over to the regulatory authority.

Most legal counsel will recommend involvement of the RA.

Yes , "were from the government and were here to help" TC be careful we all know they have a spy on here and if they show up they are likely to try and find other issues .

I agree only with the "find other issues". A complaint filed with the regional office will result in a full inspection and other issues may come out.

If the oil company does not respond like they should then it is time to take it to the next level. That is what they are there for. M has no idea about how it works. Im sure hed probably just barge into their office and threaten everybody. You cant bully these companies like you can the local echo dealer. Mean while, while he was doing all that they would still be spilling oil on your ground. It looks like this is who regulates in Kansas:
http://www.kcc.state.ks.us
Start there

 

[skyhightree1]

I know nothing about oil rigs but wish I had a bunch on my place.

 

[Bright Raven]

Craig,

I don't think so. Here is their mission:

The KCC regulates natural gas, electricity, telephone and transportation vendors requiring safe, adequate and reliable services at reasonable rates. KCC also requires oil and gas producers to protect the environmental and correlative rights.

They are on the COMMERCE side of the business. Requires is different than regulate.

 

[Brute 23]

Ohio, and that area is the Utica Shale. Massive amounts of natural gas and liquids. That is why I said I will never see NG prices climb in my lifetime.

TC, that is what I use to do, and still do to some extent. My dad gauges wells and I'm a supervisor on the production/ completion side. It is my job to make sure the gaugers are doing what needs to be done to prevent that situation. In the event it does happen, I make it right, and do every thing possible to prevent it again.

IMO, that is completely unacceptable and you have every right to drop the hammer on them.

If you have talked to the gaugers, talked to the foreman and nothing has happened.... call there corporate and ask if they have a spill report number or contact you need to report a spill... and specify you do not want to talk to that local foreman again. When you get some one on the phone get their name, title, phone number and email address right off the bat. That will be a red flag. Explain that you have contacted these other people and have gotten no resolution. Specifically say you are doing this as a courtesy to let the handle it internally before you go to you state agency. If they say they will take care of it let them you know will be sending them an email with a picture attached and you would like them to reply with a time frame in which it will be handled. If you have a land man that you dealt with that might be a good start also.

If they give you any grief, tell them flat out you are going to build a house and offer it free of rent to your local agency just so they can wake up every single morning and check those wells to start the day since they refuse to get a gauger who will.

Get a game camera on this wells so you can document how frequent it is checked. That will go to prove neglegence rather than the accident plea.

Let me know if I an help in any other way. That makes me so furious because you have a nice place and your local foreman thinks he is above the rules. He gives all of us a bad name. As a supervisor I would be making heads roll if a land owner sent that to me.

 

[Craig Miller]

About all I've been doing lately is hauling stuff in and out of pipeline construction sites. I'm no genius but 2 42" high pressure lines are going to move some gas. It starts in the Ohio/WV/Pennsylvania area and runs into Michigan. I'm wondering who's​ funding that.

At what price are they able to make money in the marcellus? It must be cheap to produce with gas prices like they are. When i was drilling gas in arkansas they needed it to be $7-8 per unit to make money. It was around $11 at the time. Now it is mostly all shutdown.

 

[Brute 23]

Money loves oil and gas. It's not hard to raise it if you have a gimic. There is no other investment like it. Right now the money is begging for places to go. These big money managers don't make their % by having the money sitting idle. No matter if the gimic works or not they get their piece as long as it is moving. It's called the prostitution of money... they are money pimps. They have to keep the money working to get their cut.

 

[Bright Raven]

TCRanch

Its your land, your money, your decision.

I sorted it out further. Here is information on how to file your complaint and seek remedial action.

https://www.epa.gov/ks/forms/contact-us ... epa-kansas

 

[Craig Miller]

Craig,

I don't think so. Here is their mission:

The KCC regulates natural gas, electricity, telephone and transportation vendors requiring safe, adequate and reliable services at reasonable rates. KCC also requires oil and gas producers to protect the environmental and correlative rights.

They are on the COMMERCE side of the business. Requires is different than regulate.

If that is not it then they do a good job of hiding which agency is in charge of it there. Normally you can find it with just a quick google search. That is the only thing showing on the first 2 pages if results no matter how i word the search.

 

[ohiosteve]

About all I've been doing lately is hauling stuff in and out of pipeline construction sites. I'm no genius but 2 42" high pressure lines are going to move some gas. It starts in the Ohio/WV/Pennsylvania area and runs into Michigan. I'm wondering who's​ funding that.

At what price are they able to make money in the marcellus? It must be cheap to produce with gas prices like they are. When i was drilling gas in arkansas they needed it to be $7-8 per unit to make money. It was around $11 at the time. Now it is mostly all shutdown.

I have no idea Craig. But that dual line had got to be one of the bigger ones around. I tried googling it but had no luck.

 

[Bright Raven]

Craig,

I don't think so. Here is their mission:

The KCC regulates natural gas, electricity, telephone and transportation vendors requiring safe, adequate and reliable services at reasonable rates. KCC also requires oil and gas producers to protect the environmental and correlative rights.

They are on the COMMERCE side of the business. Requires is different than regulate.

If that is not it then they do a good job of hiding which agency is in charge of it there. Normally you can find it with just a quick google search. That is the only thing showing on the first 2 pages if results no matter how i word the search.

I dug it out of the regional webpage. Has the phone numbers and a means to submit electronic communication.

 

[greybeard]

When I was working the Austin Chalk play in the early 80s, there were generally 20+ rigs running within a 20 mile radius of both Caldwell and Giddings Tx.

Austin chalk runs all over he way over here. Currently have acreage leased to Pantheon.

Yep, so does the Woodbine. Both extend over in to La and maybe into Miss.
More recent is the Eaglebine play which isn't an actual formation, but a play where producers are hitting both the Eagle Ford and Woodbine in one drilling operation, and producing from both.
The way they are drilling & producing nowadays is light years beyond what they could do when I was working in it, both above and below surface...back when we had wooden derricks and iron men. (ok, I'm full of :bs: about the wooden derricks part..)

Brute is right about the spill. It's bad for the industry and bad for the landowner, not to mention bad for public relations. Things like that can only lead to more stringent regulation and enforcement.
I think it was Apache that took a big hit up in the Anadarka when a reserve pit levee broke and flooded a farmers little wheat field. Not a big spill and not much acerage or wheat involved, but landowner got the feds involved and now all cuttings in Okla drilling have to go into steel tanks as they are produced. That, is a big pita, tho I did make a good income in the mid 90s slurrying the cuttings and pumping it down the backside of the well.. sometimes, even while the well was being drilled. That's some deep stuff, high pressure, and big iron in Anadarko.
(we did the same thing with naturally occurring radioactive material in E Texas, S Texas, W Texas and La and Mississippi, till some big $$ got the regs changed and the states decided it was ok to dilute the stuff with soil and land farm it. Did 2 jobs at the Chevron dock in Morgan City and hauled it out in tanks on work boats to pump down an abandoned offshore well)

Did a remediation job near Rosenburg Tx, right next to a subdivision. Nothing gets the neighbors' attention faster than a bunch of yellow tape, Tyvek suits walking around with scintillation tubes (Geiger counters) and those gold/magenta "radioactive area" triangles.
:lol2: :lol2:

 

[Bright Raven]

Ohio, and that area is the Utica Shale. Massive amounts of natural gas and liquids. That is why I said I will never see NG prices climb in my lifetime.

TC, that is what I use to do, and still do to some extent. My dad gauges wells and I'm a supervisor on the production/ completion side. It is my job to make sure the gaugers are doing what needs to be done to prevent that situation. In the event it does happen, I make it right, and do every thing possible to prevent it again.

IMO, that is completely unacceptable and you have every right to drop the hammer on them.

If you have talked to the gaugers, talked to the foreman and nothing has happened.... call there corporate and ask if they have a spill report number or contact you need to report a spill... and specify you do not want to talk to that local foreman again. When you get some one on the phone get their name, title, phone number and email address right off the bat. That will be a red flag. Explain that you have contacted these other people and have gotten no resolution. Specifically say you are doing this as a courtesy to let the handle it internally before you go to you state agency. If they say they will take care of it let them you know will be sending them an email with a picture attached and you would like them to reply with a time frame in which it will be handled. If you have a land man that you dealt with that might be a good start also.

If they give you any grief, tell them flat out you are going to build a house and offer it free of rent to your local agency just so they can wake up every single morning and check those wells to start the day since they refuse to get a gauger who will.

Get a game camera on this wells so you can document how frequent it is checked. That will go to prove neglegence rather than the accident plea.

Let me know if I an help in any other way. That makes me so furious because you have a nice place and your local foreman thinks he is above the rules. He gives all of us a bad name. As a supervisor I would be making heads roll if a land owner sent that to me.

I agree with your feelings and your suggestions are good.

 

[True Grit Farms]

That is a lot of rigs for the size of Ohio. I could see where you are noticing it. It's both a blessing and a curse.

Baker keeps a pretty good count but they don't have every single rig, all the time. We have one drilling right now that is not on the list.



Tell that company they make stuff to prevent that. It's a bucket that goes around the stuffing box. If the packing starts leaking it fills the bucked and trips a float switch that shuts the unit off.

I would also question how often their gauger is coming by. That's a lot of oil. Not sure what that well produces but it would have to pump for a while like that to make that big of a mess IMO.

Ask them nicely to get one. If they refuse, tell them you will have yalls local agency out to pull samples on that soil because I doubt they dug out all that dirt and hauled it off.

No, they did not dig out the dirt and we've had so much rain it's filling up again with residual oil/water. The company that originally had our lease was located in KS, pumper lived a couple miles away. Sold out to a company just outside Houston and the pumper lives in Wichita, definitely is not checking on a daily basis, and the foreman lives 4 hours away. Asking them nicely to do anything has not worked and we are threatening legal action: it's been over 2 years and they still haven't put in roads so our pastures are a mess in addition to a lot of other clean-up. Royalties are nice but sometimes I question whether it's worth it.

Don't spend your own money. Call the US EPA office in Region 7. 11201 Renner Blvd, Lenexa, KS 66219.

https://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/epa-region-7-midwest

You will see a line that says: Report Spills and Violations. Follow it from there.

Be aware: they may have an enforcement agreement with the State of Kansas.

F...THE EPA. ONLY A POS WOULD CALL THE GOVERNMENT.

 

[Bright Raven]

No, they did not dig out the dirt and we've had so much rain it's filling up again with residual oil/water. The company that originally had our lease was located in KS, pumper lived a couple miles away. Sold out to a company just outside Houston and the pumper lives in Wichita, definitely is not checking on a daily basis, and the foreman lives 4 hours away. Asking them nicely to do anything has not worked and we are threatening legal action: it's been over 2 years and they still haven't put in roads so our pastures are a mess in addition to a lot of other clean-up. Royalties are nice but sometimes I question whether it's worth it.

Don't spend your own money. Call the US EPA office in Region 7. 11201 Renner Blvd, Lenexa, KS 66219.

https://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/epa-region-7-midwest

You will see a line that says: Report Spills and Violations. Follow it from there.

Be aware: they may have an enforcement agreement with the State of Kansas.

F...THE EPA. ONLY A POS WOULD CALL THE GOVERNMENT.

That's your opinion. I would not have expected it to say anything less. Just don't stay mad at me.

 

[Craig Miller]

No, they did not dig out the dirt and we've had so much rain it's filling up again with residual oil/water. The company that originally had our lease was located in KS, pumper lived a couple miles away. Sold out to a company just outside Houston and the pumper lives in Wichita, definitely is not checking on a daily basis, and the foreman lives 4 hours away. Asking them nicely to do anything has not worked and we are threatening legal action: it's been over 2 years and they still haven't put in roads so our pastures are a mess in addition to a lot of other clean-up. Royalties are nice but sometimes I question whether it's worth it.

Don't spend your own money. Call the US EPA office in Region 7. 11201 Renner Blvd, Lenexa, KS 66219.

https://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/epa-region-7-midwest

You will see a line that says: Report Spills and Violations. Follow it from there.

Be aware: they may have an enforcement agreement with the State of Kansas.

F...THE EPA. ONLY A POS WOULD CALL THE GOVERNMENT.

Or some one who doesnt want oil spilled all over their land

 

[True Grit Farms]

Once a Narc - Snitch = a pos for ever.

 

[greybeard]

When much younger I used to think gauger would be a good job to have, but heard one too many stories about gaugers and H²S. That stuff scares the crap out of me.

 

[Bright Raven]

Once a Narc - Snitch = a pos for ever.

Grit. Are you the same True Grit that Cow Pollintor was whining about yesterday that I mistreat?

I think your character more than demonstrates that you can dish it out as good as you can take it. So my conscience for mistreating you is clear.

 

[M-5]

Your right Craig I don't know anything about it and I find it strange that an oil company can just set up on property without any input from land owners. Seems to me if they didn't do what they should you can just shut them down but I guess the money is the root of the problem.

 

[Caustic Burno]

Your right Craig I don't know anything about it and I find it strange that an oil company can just set up on property without any input from land owners. Seems to me if they didn't do what they should you can just shut them down but I guess the money is the root of the problem.

They can set up where they want here the only exceptions I know of wells have to be spaced out 3K feet.
That is from talking to the Anadarko Representative and they can't get closer than 250 feet of your homestead.
Any thing else bite your bottom lip and cash the check.