watch well pads appear in satellite video

Google has a new time lapse feature that will display videos of Landsat (satellite) photographs from 1984 - 2012.

Go to http://earthengine.google.org/#intro/WyomingCoal then type "Rifle, CO" into the "search anywhere box" and when PLACES appears, click on "Rifle, CO" below it.  The white zits that appear scattered across the land after about 2000 are gas well pads.

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Permalink Reply by Hunter on May 9, 2013 at 12:46pm

Those look like flowers to me!

Permalink Reply by Paul Heckbert on November 24, 2013 at 12:49am

Here's a disturbing video tour of scarred landscapes across the United States: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jN6TSSPZwU

Permalink Reply by cattlerancher on November 24, 2013 at 7:55am

The white zits you are seeing is when you look in a mirror...... 

Permalink Reply by Steven A Joliat on November 24, 2013 at 11:39am

Chip you are correct.  This area of Colorado has numerous closely spaced 40-80 acre relatively shallow coalbed methane wells.  The distribution of wells is similar to the historic shallow drilling in eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania.  Check the ODNR well locator to view a similar density of wells in Carroll County Ohio near the Atwood Lake reservoir.  If you look at the same area of Ohio in Google Earth, you cannot easily discern the existence of old wells drilled before 1990.  The horizontal well drilling activity proposed will not generate anything near this amount of surface disturbance.  With long laterals and multiwell pads, you would require as few as two or three pads per square mile, possibly less to effectively drain the reservoir.

Permalink Reply by lynn on November 25, 2013 at 8:36pm

Looks a lot like the pictures of the wind farms out west.  Though the shallow wells don't kill eagles and other protected birds.  Would love to see a comparison of energy produced per acre.

Permalink Reply by Paul Heckbert on November 26, 2013 at 1:39am

Re bird deaths:

In Cecil, Washington County, PA, the Observer-Reporter newspaper says

"near the impoundment … The couple, in addition to another resident, Kathleen Konechney, said the amount of dead birds or birds without feathers in that area is abnormal."

http://www.observer-reporter.com/article/20130903/NEWS01/130909869

US Fish & Wildlife Service says:

re coal-fired power plant and trona impoundments, "Birds landing on these ponds can become encrusted with salt and may drown. Birds that preen their feathers can become sick or die due to ingesting too much salt."

http://www.fws.gov/mountain-prairie/contaminants/contaminants3.html

Earthworks (environmental nonprofit) writes:

"Between 1996 and 2002, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Montana, South Dakota and North Dakota conducted 475 field inspections at sites having one or more production pits or commercial facilities using disposal pits. ... Problems were found at 290 (more than 60%) of the sites. Issues of concern included:

…There were a number of bird and wildlife deaths related to the pits."

http://www.earthworksaction.org/issues/detail/pit_rule

howstuffworks.com says

Bird deaths due to power lines and cats are each about 10,000 times as numerous as deaths due to wind turbines.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/wind-t...

It would be interesting to see a comparative study of bird deaths due to fracking impoundments and bird deaths due to wind turbines (and windows and cars and pesticides and farm equipment and …).

Permalink Reply by Mike Fulper on November 26, 2013 at 10:20am

No wind turbines or oil wells got the Passenger pigeons ...

we just ATE EM ALL   :)

This discussion is for the birds...

Permalink Reply by Renee E. Dorsey on November 26, 2013 at 12:53pm

Yeah, or factory farming???  

Permalink Reply by MJ on November 25, 2013 at 10:26pm

Paul.

Do some research (ODNR Interactive Well Viewer) - the entire US is dotted with vertical wells - all penetrate the water aquifer, and farmers have always worked around the pads, tanks & pumpjacks.  Horizontals are a blessing to the envronment and the farmer (less surface disturbance)

 

Permalink Reply by mark ondrusek on November 26, 2013 at 1:19pm

paul, it is not your land.  do you understand the meaning of private property?   start buying up land and sit on it,  pay the taxes for years,  put up w all the government regulations,  work from morning to night with a meager income and lets see if you change your tune!  many of us land owners took huge risks to buy our land.  stay out of my business!

Permalink Reply by LewisClarku on November 26, 2013 at 5:32pm
Thanks Paul....I love the sites of employment from any altitude.....it looks like victory!

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