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I received a call the other day from an associate in the drilling business and we were discussing the ‘shale oil’ operations in the States. He asked me to get on Google Earth and to take a look West of Midland, for a start. You can see literally thousands of well sites as they show up as white dots from altitude. The well spacing in some areas looks to be 100 yards or less in some areas. Now keep in mind that at some point ALL of these wells will need to be P&A’d – which will be an astronomical cost for no return. Furthermore, unless the casings are cut off below ‘plow depth’ these areas will never again be suitable for agriculture (at the moment many areas are not suitable for grazing or agriculture simply due to operations in the various fields.
I wonder if anyone has ever factored in these associated costs of the unchecked drilling in the LTO basins?