Trumbull County gas pipeline production starts to ramp up

June 19, 2013 at 6:06p.m.

Trumbull pipeline production ramps up

WARREN

With the first hydraulically fractured well in Trumbull County set to begin production on Hayes-Orangeville Road in Hartford Township on July 1, pipeline production is starting to ramp up.

Vounty commissioners approved permits Wednesday to Dominion East Ohio gas company to bore under three county roads in connection with the installation of gas-gathering pipelines.

Ten pipe routes are proposed, with some of them set to go into service by September, said Jack Simon, road-use and maintenance-agreement coordinator for county Engineer Randy Smith.

Each of the three transmission lines approved Wednesday are for wells that will be drilled this year by BP America.

Dominion is preparing to install pipelines to provide a way for gas to be transferred from the well sites to market. Some have wells nearby that already have been drilled. Others are near wells that have not yet been drilled, Simon said.

These are the first permits to be issued for new gas transmission lines related to the Utica Shale play, Simon said.

One is for a line on Warner Road from state Route 305 to near King-Graves Road that will run along the Fowler-Hartford townships line.

The second one is on Thompson Clark Road in Bristol Township, from state Route 88 south.

The third one is for a gas line on Kale Adams Road, 535 feet west of Wood Lenhart Road in Warren Township.

The installations require Dominion to work along the edge of the road. Dominion is doing that now near the intersection of state Route 193 and state Route 88 in Johnston Township, Simon said.

The other company drilling in Trumbull County is Halcon Resources Corp., which does not plan to install the lines under county roads and therefore won’t need a permit from the county, Simon said.

Halcon is instead drilling under farm fields and other rural property, he said.

The installation of gas pipelines is one aspect of gas and oil drilling that has produced jobs and revenue for local companies, Simon noted.

Unlike the drilling and seismic-testing operations, BP and Halcon appear to be using local companies to install and provide the pipelines because those tasks are familiar to local companies, Simon said.

There are 18 projected Trumbull County wells either drilled or planned this year in the Utica Shale play — seven for Halcon and 11 for BP. The CNX company was planning to drill a well on Warren-Sharon Road in Vienna, but it has started closing that site and apparently won’t be drilling there, Simon said. Five of the 18 already have been drilled and hydraulically fractured, or fracked, and two more are in the drilling process.

At six of the 18 locations, the county engineer’s office has a road-use and maintenance agreement that calls for 11.86 miles of roads to be repaved as part of the project, Simon said. The county engineer’s office has no jurisdiction over road work on six wells on state routes.