Ranchers ready for drilling fight

Ranchers ready for drilling fight by Elise Stolte, July 17, 2005, Calgary Herald
“These pads minimize disturbance. That’s what people are not understanding right now,” said Neville, who also owns ranchland in the area. She outlined a list of studies and new harvesting techniques that will help the company restore the site when they finish. But is she sure they will succeed? She hesitated. “We have not been doing this long enough to have positive results, but we’ve seen good trends,” she said. “It takes a long time.”… That’s not good enough for Davis, who is also a counsellor for the MD of Ranchlands and has been working with Compton since before the first exploratory wells in 2003. “The density of wells will still be extreme (even when using multi-well pads),” he said. “This is a very tight gas field. That has a tremendous impact on the landscape.” A key to this disagreement lies many kilometres south, in southern Wyoming, where the Greater Green River Basin provides the only example of a successfully tapped, similar rock foundation. Local environmental and landowner groups point to the basin as a horrific example of development gone wrong. … “The industry calls it ‘carpet bombing’ or statistical drilling,” said Andrew Nikiforuk, a landowner and environmental writer from the area. “You drill as many friggin’ wells as you can in the hopes that 60 per cent of them will produce a small amount of gas.” “We’re talking about drilling it to death,” he added.

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