The citizens of Weirton, WV are rallying against a well pad proposed by SWN. It will be located on a 300 acre tract of land, which is awfully big, but it’s also awfully close to some retail shopping and other businesses, and close enough to some residential areas that I can understand their concern. See maps below.

The usual concerns my clients have expressed in the past have been about light and noise from the drilling rig, and dust and road damage from the trucks.

Those residential areas to the north and to the east of the Brownlee well pad will definitely be affected by the light, and even to some extent by the noise. Those drilling rigs make a lot of noise at times. The lights are the main complaint I’ve heard, though. When they’re drilling, the rig is like a high powered, all-white-light Christmas tree. The lights are so bright it can make it hard to sleep at night.

The good news is that there is quick access to the highway so the trucks won’t spend a lot of time on surface roads. I would want to know which roads they will be using, and make sure SWN keeps those truckers in control. One of the main complaints I hear is that truckers get too comfortable with their routes and start really flying along. It can be heart stopping when a big truck like that comes barreling past going the other way on a sharp curve, and barely staying in its lane.

SWN and other oil and gas companies must do a better job of working with their neighbors than they have previously. If the Atlantic Coast Pipeline had been a better neighbor it might have been able to complete its project, and definitely would have been a lot closer to its original deadlines. The days of the Wild, Wild, West in oil and gas drilling are gone. Oil and gas companies no longer get to bully landowners the way they used to, even though they still try to.

We really hope that SWN works with its neighbors in this case.