19.11.15
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live next door to an oil well?
I am going to find out because a well will be drilled 500 metres (546 yards) from my house. That pic above is the view from my front deck.
I have a fabulous ocean view and the wellsite is going to be smack in the middle.
This view is from the front deck looking out to the ENSCO 107 jackup rig 4.6 km away on the horizon. The Greymouth well will be drilled somewhere beyond the rise behind those two sheds, but it will be mostly out of sight of our house.
I’m not complaining and I’m not anti-oil exploration or fracking. I just thought it would be an opportunity to record and share the experience.
There are other oil and gas blogs and they tend to be somewhat anti. I’ll try to be neutral and stick to the facts as I know them.
Setting the scene
I’ll just set the scene: I’m Richard Woodd, a retired journalist living with my wife in New Zealand, in a region called Taranaki. Two years ago we bought a three acre field at a place called Urenui. The region is the country’s only oil and gas producing area and it’s been quite active for the past 45 years. There is a big methanol plant about 5km away from us, numerous wellsites dotted around and 4.6 km out in the ocean, a jackup up rig is parked next to the Pohokura production platform for a maintenance workover that has just started and will run on for most of our summer.
This is a dusk view in the other direction, showing snow-capped Mount Taranaki silhouetted by the setting sun. It’s a dormant volcano and the major feature of the regional landscape.
I do have one concern and that’s the legal rights of landowners/residents when somebody decides they want to drill. In essence the Crown Minerals Act gives approved and competent companies the right to drill wherever and whenever they like within defined exploration permit areas that they have had to bid for.
Consents issued by local and regional councils are only to control and monitor the environmental effects. Maori tribal organisations must be consulted at every step along this path and any earthworks are subject to archaeological assessment (as there is a risk of disturbing or exposing ancient burial and cooking sites).
If saleable oil or gas is found, a mining permit is required.
Raised at political forum
I raised concerns at a recent public forum before a panel of visiting National Party Members of Parliament. Journalist Sue O’Dowd reported this as follows in the Taranaki Daily News of 12 November 2015:
About 50 North Taranaki rural residents and community leaders gave rural National Members of Parliament the message at a roadshow at Urenui.
Richard Woodd said landowners affected by oil drilling had insufficient rights. Sometimes it was years before energy companies drilled wells for which they had resource consents, so a 2010 consent describing effects as minor did not necessarily apply now. Consents for oil-drilling affected the value of surrounding land whose owners were affected, whatever the views of a planner.
New Plymouth district councillor Craig McFarlane said North Taranaki had experienced huge growth in oil exploration. The recovery of oil and gas brought huge benefits to New Zealand but if the process was too difficult, it would not happen.
However, oil and gas exploration and the forestry industry made a huge impact on the district’s roads, but the council received nothing from them for road maintenance.
Oil and gas companies were intensifying their activities and were now endeavouring to be good neighbours and the council had recognised they would be in the district for a while.
While oil exploration was a festering issue in the community, the council had to base its decisions on the district plan and the Resource Management Act and to balance environmental, economic and social outcomes, he said.
The house we now live in arrived in three loads early in the morning. Here the trucks are parked while the crew went off for breakfast. It’s a modern Lockwood house of three bedrooms, plus a double garage. It all went pretty much without a hitch.
We bought our property in 2014 knowing that Greymouth Petroleum Ltd had a consented wellsite on the dairy farm of Tony Main next door. Ours was just a bare paddock then (and still is pretty much, as we can’t be bothered with animals and just sell our grass three times a year to a neighbour as baled silage). We have had two used houses moved on and two sheds.
House and building relocation is big business in New Zealand as most are made of wood and are relatively easy to pick up and carry. Hundreds of houses are shifted every year by around 15 specialist companies, some of whom are in demand to do tricky relocation jobs in other countries as well. In the past seven years we have relocated six houses and six garages, some of which were sold, some have become rentals. But to make such projects financially viable you need to be a tough negotiator and capable of doing most of your own reinstatement work.
There are ten occupied households on our short, narrow, no-exit road and all will be affected to some extent by the proposed drilling – additional traffic, heavy trucks, noise, floodlights and in the event of flow testing, the glare from burning off gas.
Subdivision affected
Mr Main is potentially the worst affected because he is proposing to convert his farm into a 17-lot lifestyle block subdivision; even though the area can be very windy, virtually all the lots have sea views. This has been consented and the wellsite is in the middle of it. He is unable to proceed until he sees whether they find anything, because a producing site will inevitably affect his land values and saleability. Greymouth will also build its own fenced-off access road across his farm.
Both the subdivision and the wellsite were consented in 2010.
When I had read the full details of the consents, I became aware of the potential traffic problems in particular. But the associated planning report assessed the broad environmental effects of the project as being “less than minor.”
The existing residents had made their road safety concerns known when consulted before the consents were issued. Greymouth met the traffic safety criteria set by the local council and were not required to spend anything on road widening or safety. The road is one truck width wide, and has a blind curving brow. It is used daily by milk collection tankers, other heavy farm traffic, tractors and so on. When two vehicles meet, one is usually forced off into the water table.
I alerted the council to this matter and they sent out contractors who widened a section by 1 metre to essentially create a passing bay. There are still width issues on the rest of the road and inevitably the seal edge will break up. Incidentally, the contractor’s rep I spoke to knew nothing about the wellsite or the subdivision!
When we came along and read the full council file (which they supplied on a disc, for $30), we asked to be declared an affected party. “Sorry, the consents issued in 2010 are final. You can try talking to Greymouth Petroleum.”
About Greymouth Petroleum
So that’s what I did. First, you need to know that GPL is a rare entity, a small New Zealand company that has been reasonably successful at a lower level in oil and gas, although it is a minnow in the pond compared to the likes of Shell, OMV, Todd, TAG, Origin, to name some of the bigger operators here.
Todd is also a NZ company but family owned, very rich, and long established. Todd is a major partner with Shell in NZ’s biggest oil and gas fields. They are developing the McKee and Mangahewa fields a few kms from us and at night we can see the lights of ‘Big Ben’ the $42m drilling rig that was specially built in Sweden for Todd. The rig can be walked around on hydraulic jacks. You see a video of this happening:
http://www.toddenergy.co.nz/operations/production/big-ben/
Greymouth has aspirations to get a lot bigger and is steadily tapping into onshore fields through the parcel of permits it holds.
It hasn’t always been rosy for GPL. The company had a reputation as “a cowboy” in the industry and for the past five years has been wracked by a bitter feud between the owners, which has been played out in the public court. Read it all about here:
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/supreme-court-ends-greymouth-petroleum-stoush-bd-163714
So I asked GPL when they intended to start drilling, as their consent would be expiring on December 17 and the consents manager Tanya Dickey said she would come out and see us. I invited all the neighbours as well.
She said that given the low oil price, GPL could prepare the site for the use and storage of hazardous substances and then delay drilling until the oil price comes back up. This is something they have done at the Epiha A Site. It was likely that two other prospects would be drilled before Main at this stage.
Community concerns
She said community concerns about noise, light and dust pollution were addressed in GPL’s consent conditions in 2010. The fact that Richard and Jill had moved in much later, meant they could not be declared an affected party in retrospect. However she said GPL was undergoing a change in management and culture and community concerns around wellsites were being taken more seriously. She urged local residents to raise any matters of concern direct with her and they would act appropriately, subject to head office approval of any expenditure.
Portable sound and light-blocking blankets were available and in the case of our close proximity to the proposed access road, she also would not rule out providing a high fence to mitigate dust and noise from passing heavy vehicles, if requested.
The primary concern of the residents was the risk of collisions on Kaipikari Rd. The road was already too narrow and conflict with other vehicles on the blind, curving rise was frequent. There was no pullover space and the edge of the seal was already breaking up. I estimated the local in and out vehicle movements at as much as 30 per weekday, including milk tankers and numerous Main farm vehicles, and stock transporters and other large trucks.
Ms Dickey said GPL’s traffic management plan envisaged an average of 30 Vehicle Equivalent Movements per week and a maximum of 50 VEM in any one day (a car/ute = 2VEM, a truck = 10VEM). They did not require a traffic consent unless the number was exceeded.
GPL was not required to and would not be making any road improvements other than signage and possibly a mirror. Ms Dickey said if residents wanted improvements to the sealed access road they must approach the NPDC.
Asked why GPL did not instead directional drill from the producing Onaero wellsite about 1km away, Ms Dickey said the Turangi field extended further out to sea than was previously thought and the drilling distance was beyond the capability of GPL’s rigs.
Asked why GPL did not use the ENSCO jackup offshore rig currently in the area, she said GPL was not equipped or consented to drill offshore and that there were a number of environmental risks associated with offshore drilling.
A further meeting was held on October 25, with Greymouth’s driller Tom Crowley present. They announced that site preparation will start November 25, after a site blessing with the local iwi Ngatimutunga.
The cleared area will be about 20mx20m, with a ring drain, cellar and conductor. The conductor is a 30inch casing driven about 10m down and cemented in place. That is where the drilling will start. There will also be a 200 barrel tank on site and the area will be metalled.
As they have 2-3 other wells to drill first Dickey said it could be 2-3 years before drilling starts here.
Crowley said there may only be one well required. Drilling to 4000m would only take 6 weeks. The well will be vertical. The results and analysis will determine what other wells will be drilled, and whether directional.
In response to concerns about noise and floodlight pollution, Dickey said the Canadian-made sound-blocking blankets were very effective and would be placed around the site perimeter fence. Crowley said drilling floodlights had been vastly improved and can be directed away from houses. Hundreds of thousands of dollars had been spent on these matters.
Wellsite ceremony
This happened at 5.30 am on 24.11.15. Loosely referred to as a blessing, it was an awkward and slightly hostile event, attended by six members of the local iwi Ngatimutunga (pictured below).
The party leader said their concern as tangata whenua (people of the land) was with the land; they would always be spiritually connected to it no matter what happened on the land.
This wellsite was “a done deal” and nothing would change that. But it was the beginning of something and they had seen it many times before.
He led the group in a karakia (prayer) and waiata (chant). Some tears were shed during this.
Below: Greymouth Petroleum representatives at the site led by Tanya Dickey (pointing). She said it may be years before a well is drilled.
livingbesideanoilwell 