Data Collection and Analysis Strategies to Mitigate the Impacts of Oil and Gas Activities

DRAFT

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS STRATEGIES TO MITIGATE THE IMPACTS OF OIL AND GAS ACTIVITIES ON WYOMING COUNTY ROADS

Phase I

Khaled Ksaibati, PhD., P.E.

Director, Wyoming T2/LTAP Center

1000 E. University Avenue, Dept. 3295

Laramie, WY 82071

Phone: (307) 766-6230

FAX: (307) 766-6784

e-mail:

Submitted To

Wyoming Department of Transportation

ABSTRACT

Many parts of the State of Wyoming, along with other oil and natural gas producing regions, are experiencing a dramatic increase in exploratory and production drilling. Recently, the oil and natural gas industry improved the process for drilling horizontally and fracturing underground formations to let out more oil and gas. Such advancement made it possible to extract oil and gas from the Niobrara Shale which is located in the southeastern corner of the state of Wyoming. County roads that once handled very low traffic volumes will be expected to carry hundreds of vehicles per day with a high proportion of heavy trucks. The main objective of this study is to outline a methodology which will help counties in developing strategies so that their roads can effectively serve the needs of the driving public as well as the oil and gas industry. The developed methodology should result in helping the counties in adjusting their maintenance and rehabilitation strategies so that they can allocate their limited resources effectively. In addition, the study will identify current conditions and needed investments to keep local roads in serviceable conditions and document changes due to unforeseen use. Such documentations are very useful for law makers allocating funds to compensate counties for the impacts to their roads and ensure economic development for the region. The methodology developed will not only identify needed improvements on local roads, it will also help in ranking the various improvements within each county. Such ranking will insure that funding is invested in a cost effective manner. The ultimate goal is to provide an effective tool for allocating scarce resources to insure that road conditions are acceptable for all potential local and industrial users.

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank all staff members of the WYT2/LTAP for their help with the various phases of the oil and gas study.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background 1

1.2 Contributions to the State Economy 2

1.3 Study Justifications 3

1.4 Objectives 3

1.5 Study Organization 4

CHAPTER 2 THE NORTH DAKOTA STUDY 6

2.1 Objectives 6

2.2 Principles of North Dakota Study 6

2.3 Data Collection and Analysis 7

2.4 North Dakota Study Recommendations 7

2.5 Considerations for the Wyoming Study 8

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY 9

3.1 Data Management 9

3.2 Inventory 10

3.3 Additional Data 11

3.4 Oil Production Locations (Impact classification) 13

3.5 Condition Data 13

3.5.1 Gravel Road Ratings 13

3.5.2 Asphalt Roads Assessments 17

3.5.3 Cattle guards Assessments 19

3.6 Data Summary 19

3.7 Improvement Recommendations 21

3.7.1 Paved and Unpaved Roads 21

3.7.2 Cattle guards 23

3.8 Maintenance and Rehabilitation Data 24

3.9 Industrial Permits 26

3.10 Chapter Summary 28

CHAPTER 4 DATA AVAILABILITY in study area 29

4.1 Converse County Data 29

4.2 Goshen County Data 32

4.3 Laramie County Data 35

4.4 Platte County Data 37

4.5 Data Summary 38

4.6 Chapter Summary 41

CHAPTER 5 Conclusions and RECOMMENDATIONS 42

5.1 Summary 42

5.2 Conclusions 42

5.2.1 Data Collection and Analysis Strategies 42

5.2.2 Assessment of Counties in Southeastern Wyoming 43

5.2.3 Follow up Studies 44

5.3 Recommendations 46

References 47

TABLE OF FIGURES

Figure 1.1 Crooks Gap Road, Sweetwater County, Wyoming. 2

Figure 1.2 Counties to be included in this study. 4

Figure 3.1 Input menu for the TAMS software. 14

Figure 3.2 Drainage rating for gravel roads. 16

Figure 3.3 Dust rating for gravel roads. 17

Figure 3.4 Pathway data collection van for paved roads. 18

Figure 3.5 Pathway software for determining PCI, IRI, and rut depth. 19

Figure 3.6 Cattle guards on unpaved roads 20

Figure 3.7 Data collection for unpaved roads in Phase II. 20

Figure 3.8 Data collection for paved roads in phase II. 21

Figure 3.9 Data analysis on paved roads to rank improvements in phase II. 22

Figure 3.10 Developing improvement recommendations [10]. 23

Figure 3.11 Cattle guard evaluations and recommendations for improvements. 24

Figure 3.12 Impact of oil and gas truck traffic on maintenance activities. 25

Figure 3.13 Cost of asphalt maintenance in Laramie County. 26

Figure 3.14 Oversize/overweight (OS/OW) permits in Laramie County. 27

Figure 4.1 Roads impacted by drilling activities in Converse County. 31

Figure 4.2 Roads impacted by drilling activities in Goshen County. 34

Figure 4.3 Roads impacted by drilling activities in Laramie County. 36

Figure 4.4 Roads impacted by drilling activities in Platte County. 39

Figure 5.1 Annual Recommendations from Phase III. 45

TABLE OF TABLES

Table 3.1 PASER gravel road overall rating standards. 15

Table 4.1 Data availability in the study area. 40

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background

In a recent study conducted in North Dakota, traffic counters were deployed at 100 locations in 15 of the 17 oil and gas producing counties. At each of the selected sites, a count of no less than 24 hours was taken and adjusted to represent the traffic over a 24-hour period. These raw counts were adjusted for monthly variation in traffic to estimate the average daily trips (ADT) for each segment. The average traffic on these segments was 145 vehicles per day. Sixty-one of these vehicles are trucks. Twenty-six of these trucks were multi-units—i.e., semitrailer or multi-trailer trucks. Perhaps the closest benchmark for major county roads is the rural collector network of the state highway system. The average daily traffic on state collectors is roughly 277 vehicles per day, of which 17 are multi-unit trucks and 14 are single-unit trucks. In comparison, the county roads in the North Dakota sample have lower ADT but higher percentages of trucks—i.e., 34 single-unit and 27 multi-unit trucks per day. The paved roads in the 100 surveyed locations have 99 trucks per day, versus 31 trucks per day on state collectors [1].

During the last oil boom of the 1970’s and early 1980’s, the Texas State Department of Highways and Public Transportation sponsored a research study that estimated that drilling a single well takes about 60 days, and that 1365 trucks larger than standard pickups travel to the well site during preparation and drilling. It also estimated that during production, lasting about three years, 150 large trucks per month serve each well. This study addressed the issues of oil field traffic on low volume roads where the additional drilling traffic had a substantial impact.

According to the Texas study, low-volume rural roads in oil-producing areas were not initially constructed to endure the impact of intense oil field truck traffic. Thus, a condition of persistent rehabilitation was not anticipated under normal operating situations, and complete pavement restoration costs were not normally accounted for in the planning of maintenance. Since typical traffic characteristics and usual vehicle distributions are not applicable to roadways that carry oil field traffic, there is a need to determine the definitive elements of oil field traffic demand [2].

Figure 1.1 Crooks Gap Road, Sweetwater County, Wyoming.

1.2 Contributions to the State Economy

The oil and gas industry has been doing business in the state of Wyoming for over 100 years. This industry has significant contributions to the Wyoming economy. According to the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, Wyoming ranked 7th in production of crude oil and 2nd in natural gas production during 2010. During the same year, the petroleum industry employed approximately 21,000 people with a payroll of over $1.1 billion. For fiscal year 2010, oil and gas production contributed $1.9 billion to state and local governments in the form of taxes and royalties. It is essential that the state of Wyoming continues to work closely with the petroleum industry to insure the adequacy of the transportation infrastructure. Such cooperation will be beneficial to the Wyoming economy, driving public as well as the oil and gas industry.

1.3 Study Justifications

With the recent escalation in oil and gas drilling activities in the southeastern corner of the state, Converse, Goshen, Laramie, and Platte counties, shown in Figure 1.2, will experience higher levels of truck traffic on their local roads. Such traffic will impact these roads and result in a significant increase in maintenance cost. A high percentage of the paved roads in these counties were built over 40 years ago. In the past, they served local traffic without the need for major upgrades. The significant increase in truck traffic will result in accelerating the damage to these originally under-designed roads which would result in significantly increasing maintenance costs. The unpaved roads in these counties will be impacted as well. Some of these roads may not have the adequate structural capacity for heavy truck traffic while other unpaved roads may not be wide enough to safely carry local and truck traffic. The increased traffic on unpaved roads will result in a significantly higher level of required maintenance and in some cases an increased need for dust control. Proper maintenance and upgrades for both paved and unpaved roads would insure meeting the expectations of both the driving public and the oil and gas industry.

The Wyoming Legislatures allocated six hundred ten thousand dollars ($610,000.00) for the purpose of evaluating impacts and formulating mitigation strategies associated with mineral exploration and production in southeastern Wyoming. The governor allocated a portion of these funds to the State Engineer’s Office to ensure water right and usage compliance issues are adequately addressed, and the rest of the fund (approximately $200,000) to the Department of Transportation for evaluation of road impacts. A small portion of the DOT allocated fund was used in this first phase so that a standard methodology for mitigating the impact of oil and gas drilling activities can be developed. It is anticipated that the implementation of the proposed methodology will help in providing impacted counties with additional resources so that they can maintain and upgrade their infrastructure. Keeping local roads in acceptable conditions is essential not only for county residents but also to the oil and gas companies which need to get their equipment efficiently to drilling sites and transport their products to markets. It is going to be difficult for both companies and impacted counties to keep up with the rapidly expanding drilling activities using county roads without the support of the Wyoming legislature.

1.4 Objectives

The main objective of this study is to outline a methodology which will help counties in developing strategies so that their roads can effectively serve the needs of the driving public as well as the oil and gas industry. The developed methodology should result in helping the counties in adjusting their maintenance and rehabilitation strategies so that they can allocate their limited resources effectively. In addition, the study will identify current conditions and needed investments to keep local roads in serviceable conditions. Such documentation is very useful for law makers allocating funds to compensate counties for the impacts to their roads. The methodology developed will not only identify needed improvements on local roads, it will also help in ranking the various improvements within each county. Such ranking will insure that funding is invested in a cost effective manner. The ultimate goal is to provide an effective tool for allocating scarce resources to insure that road conditions are acceptable for all potential local and industrial users.

Local bridges are normally evaluated by WYDOT. Therefore, they will not be included in this study. A separate effort should consider the needs for upgrading bridges. In addition, this study will not consider the impact of truck traffic on the safety of local roads.

Figure 1.2 Counties to be included in this study.

1.5 Study Organization

This study, Phase I, concentrated only on developing a methodology for evaluating the impact of gas and oil drilling activities on local roads. Such methodology is based on the guidelines recommended by the WYT2/LTAP to manage local roads [3 through 12]. The implementation of the proposed methodology will require two additional phases. Phase II will result in implementing the developed methodology in four counties. Converse, Goshen, Platte and Laramie counties were chosen for this initial implementation. The implementation will concentrate on roads with predominantly drilling traffic as identified by the participating counties. Roads with inadequate surface conditions for their functional class will be recommended for improvements. Phase II will address the immediate needs of the counties to address the impact in year 1. These recommendations can be used by law makers to allocate additional resources to improve heavily impacted local roads.

The third phase of the study will concentrate on identifying future needs in the four counties. Continuous measurements of road conditions and level of maintenance effort are essential in determining future needs. Some of the counties included in this study may not have experienced the full impact of drilling activities yet. Therefore, Phase II may not show the full impact on their infrastructure. The proposed activities for Phase III will insure the continuous monitoring of local roads so that resources are allocated not only where they are needed but also when they are needed. The Wyoming state legislature should be presented with information on the third phase so that they can allocate appropriate resources for it.

CHAPTER 2 THE NORTH DAKOTA STUDY

North Dakota has been experiencing oil and gas impact similar to Wyoming. The North Dakota legislature funded a study to evaluate the oil and gas impact in 2010 [1]. 3,300 wells were producing oil in North Dakota prior to 2005. As of November 2010, that number had risen to 5,200. In addition, the number of producing wells is expected to increase substantially in the future. Important lessons can be learned from the North Dakota study. This chapter summarizes the principles of that study, the main findings, and how some of these findings can help the Wyoming effort in evaluating the impact of oil and gas drilling activities. All information summarized in this chapter was obtained from the North Dakota study [1].