Homebuilders and cattlemen expressed concern that changing the laws could lead to property seizures and land-use disputes. That proposal has touched off a debate between the oil and gas industry, residents, homebuilders and cattlemen. Regulators there are considering expanding the drilling setback to the same 350 feet the state requires in urban areas. In North Dakota, drilling isn’t permitted within 500 feet of an “occupied dwelling” unless there’s a compelling environmental or water-access reason.Ĭolorado requires a 150-foot buffer between wells and occupied dwellings in rural areas. Seventeen states set minimum distances between shale gas wells and buildings, according to a survey of state laws by researchers at Resource for the Future’s Center for Energy Economics and Policy. Click here for their state-by-state review. Seventeen states have setback restrictions for shale gas drilling, according to research by the Center for Energy Economics and Policy. RFF/Center for Energy Economics and Policy States Have Their Sayīut other energy-rich states do have laws that limit drilling near homes. “That’s just not far enough,” Tanja Pachner says. Jarod Pachner “stepped off” the distance from their home and the new well, which he says is 450 feet from the corner of the home and less than 100 feet from the property line. “There’re no laws against dirt, there’re no laws against noise - and there should be.”ĭuring a mid-day interview with StateImpact Oklahoma in November, more than a dozen tractor-trailers paraded down the gravel road in front of the Pachner home and turned into the lot next door. “Every person who lives next to a well site has to experience this,” Tanja Pachner says. Nuisance laws allowing local governments to fine operators in urban areas are absent in rural Oklahoma. And there’s no legal barrier preventing a well from being drilled as close as property lines allow.ĭrilling rigs often operate 24 hours a day, and safety rules require operators to run bright flood lights during the evening hours. Many Oklahomans, like the Pachners, have no say in the placement of wells on their neighbors’ land. There aren’t any zoning ordinances on the edges of Ellis County, or in the rural areas seeing most of Oklahoma’s drilling boom. “But when you get out into rural Oklahoma, it’s a different story,” says Matt Skinner, spokesman for the state Corporation Commission. Matt Skinner with the Oklahoma Corporation Commission says the agency tries, on an unofficial basis, to encourage a discussion between rural landowners, energy companies and neighbors impacted by nearby drilling. Many cities and towns have zoning ordinances that limit drilling near homes and businesses. The rules also differ between urban and rural areas. If the habitable structure already exists, there’s nothing to prevent a company from drilling nearby. In Oklahoma, it’s illegal to build a “habitable structure” closer than 125 feet from an active well or 50 feet from related surface equipment. The inverse, however, is not true. The Pachners’ situation speaks to a couple of cracks that exist in state and local laws when it comes to drilling near places where people live or work. “But it was the right thing to do,” Jarod says. “They have a young family like we do,” Tanja says. The Pachners ended up letting the buyers out of the contract. They called the buyers and encouraged them to come out before the deal was finalized. The Pachners didn’t want the buyers to be surprised by the change. They found a buyer in November, but before they could close on the deal, construction started on another new well - this one just a few hundred feet from the home. Their plan, says Jarod Pachner, was to sell the home and use the money to start a livestock business. The home represented the Pachners’ life savings. Tanja Pachner watches a tractor-trailer turn into her neighbor's property where it unloaded gravel for a new Chesapeake Energy well, which was being drilled a few hundred feet from their former home.
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