The wording of the Moratorium on the City's Web site:
Moratorium on Acceptance of gas well Permit Applications.
~ Grand Prairie, Texas City Council
November 18, 2010
The Corn Valley Pad Site already has 5 wells "permitted" by the Texas Railroad Commission. And they have also been approved by the Grand Prairie, TX Environmental Services Department ~ according to the GP Gas Drilling Spreadsheet, Scroll Down to Page 4, Item 3, (last updated 11.16.10).
So, the Grand Prairie, Texas 6-Month Moratorium will not have any effect on those wells. In addition, the 6-Month Moratorium will not have any effect on other wells already "permitted" and approved by the City through Environmental Services for drilling and then fracking. That includes wells near the Trailwood neighborhood including Barnes Assembly A and West Carpo. There are a lot of wells unaffected by the specifics of this Moratorium that will continue business-as-usual under the current Gas Drilling Ordinance.
Grand Prairie, TX
Good Lord, this is truly a Nightmare of Epic Proportions.
And then (below), in our very own air and water space, there's Joe Pool Lake. How did this happen? Why did it happen? Drilling in a lake?? All the red circles on the maps represent wells in production...the black lines and blue circles represent "permitted" well bores that may have been drilled, too.
If the Corn Valley well is not affected by the moratorium, what's the story in the dismantling of the rig the past few days?
ReplyDeleteGood question. The story there is that we were told a couple of weeks ago that the "Rig" would probably be coming down this past week. And it did. On Thanksgiving Day. The wellbore was drilled in less than 30 days ~ more like 26. Of course, we don't know for certain how far it was drilled or if it was drilled at all since the "well logs" are hard to come by. (We know the Railroad Commission doesn't have them, we're wondering if the city does.) But that's something we'll try to discuss, soon, here on the blog.)
ReplyDeleteThe Rig is only needed during the drilling phase. It is not up during "fracking. We have been told that they probably won't frack Corn Valley A Well 1H until after the first of the year. But that's just what we "hear." It's a well in progress. And not affected by the 6-Month Moratorium ~ which only has to do with "accepting new permits," approved by the Railroad Commission for Grand Prairie drilling sites.
The Corn Valley Rig is down, but not forgotten. And the "fracking" is still very much in our future.
You can check out the Grand Prairie Gas Drilling Permit Spreadsheet (Page 4, 3rd Item for Corn Valley) to get updates on the Leases/Pad Sites/Wells in the city of Grand Prairie City Limits and its ETJs ~ Extra Territorial Jurisdictions (many of the lake leases are ETJs).
The current Grand Prairie Gas Drilling Ordinance gives the majority of the power for making all these decisions to the Environmental Services Department.