pcray1231
Well-known member
They must, and do, recontour the land. I'm not sure about tree replanting. A small part of the pad itself, definitely not, there will be condensate tanks and some piping there, with semi-maintained grass and semi-maintained access road. Every so often a truck will come in and empty the condensate tanks. But the edges of the pad site are usually allowed to reforest to encroach the wells some, so that the original clearing is much bigger than the permanent clearing. I don't know if they plant the trees or just let em grow naturally.
That said, the landscaping crew's arrival may be up to a year later than the frac crew's departure.
From what I've seen activities go in spurts, and different teams do different things. On the shallow wells, the landscaping team will come in for a few days and clear out the land, make the evaporation pit, etc. Then it'll sit empty for a few months. Then the drill team comes in and does their thing. Then it sits empty for weeks or months. Then the frac team shows up, then it sits empty again. Then the landscapers return.
With Marcellus, I think the same basic premise applies. Except that each team has a bigger job which will take longer. And there maybe up to 12 wells per pad, so the drill teams and frac teams rotate for a while, and the site may be a muddy mess for 3-5 years instead of 1 year like with the shallow wells.
The trade-off is that there are less wells. Instead of a new well every quarter mile or so, one well covers a much larger area due to the horizontal drilling. So the "well density" is much lower, but each site is much bigger and activity there lasts longer.
