A common phrase heard at town hall meetings or council hearings when a neighborhood is upset about the goings on about town. And, 12 years ago, a man named Jim Harris had a similar feeling. Only, he considers his backyard to be the vast shorelines of Oologah Lake.
Tired of the abandoned oilfield debris that littered the land, Harris called upon the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board for help.
Oologah Lake is the site of a recent well site restoration done by the OERB. However, this restoration is far from typical. The project covers numerous phases. And, phase one alone included 18 sites along 50 miles of shoreline on the northeast side of the lake. To date, it is one of the largest restoration projects undertaken by the OERB.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Tulsa District Office oversees Oologah Lake, its 22,000 acres of public hunting lands and 37 other lakes. The park rangers stationed there have known for many years that the debris from Oklahoma’s oil rush dotted the landscape.
Hunters and fisherman would occasionally call the park rangers with reports of opens wells and pits. They often complained about the rusty pipe and concrete blocks hiding throughout the dense forest around the lake.
Paul Shockley is one of the rangers who took some of those calls. He believes for every call he received there are likely a dozen more he didn’t. “You don’t know who has tripped over it and not reported it,” said Shockley.
Jason Person also serves the lake area as a park ranger with Shockley. Seeing all of the debris lying about has long disturbed Person. “For me, it’s about environmental stewardship,” said Person. “I want to see it cleaned up.”
And with the help of the OERB, they have.
BUILDING PARTNERSHIP
It was just about 12 years ago when Jim Harris, an Environmental Biologist with the Corps of Engineers Tulsa office, first heard about the OERB. He was attending a mineral management meeting and learned about the restoration program where OERB cleans up abandoned well sites at no cost to landowners.
“The OERB spokesperson really sold the program. There were 16,000 wells plugged during the building of the lake. I knew what was going on here. I knew we had those sites here,” said Harris. So began his quest to get the Corps of Engineers projects on the OERB list of sites that needed to be cleaned up. A quest that would take several years to come to fruition.
For most landowners, the process moves quickly – within a few weeks or a couple of months. A site is first submitted to the OERB for remediation. The OERB must then turn it over to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission who reviews the site and approves it for cleanup. By statute, the OCC must evaluate each well site to determine if there is a responsible party or if the site truly is orphaned and abandoned. Once given the “go ahead” by the OCC, the OERB can begin its restoration process.
For this particular Corps of Engineers project, the OCC approval was, perhaps, the easy part. Clearing some other “red tape” would prove more difficult and take several years to overcome. This project would be the first-of-its kind partnership between a federal government entity – the Corps – and the OERB. Harris and the OERB staff worked diligently to hammer out paperwork and contracts that were agreeable for both sides. The biggest hurdle to overcome was making the federal rules of the Corps agree with the state rules of the OERB.
However, because both agencies had the same goal in mind, an agreement was eventually reached and a successful partnership has been formed. Better yet, the Corps has created a successful model for other Corps offices and other federal agencies in need of restoration work to follow.
MAPPING OUT THE SITES
For the typical landowner, a well site might be made up of a single casing head, rig corners and a few pipes that need to be removed from their property. For the Corps of Engineers at Oologah Lake, they were dealing with multiple sites on their property. And, they felt the only way to offer the OERB a good look at what they were dealing with, was to go out on foot and four-wheeler and map them out.
Park rangers Shockley and Person lead teams of four to six men into the dense woods along the lake’s shore. They loaded up on ATV’s, armed with GPS, cameras and cans of spray paint.
“When we’d come across something, we’d shoot it and paint it and move on,” said Shockley.
The men grew more and more surprised as they drove deeper in to the woods. Hidden among the trees, rocks and streams was abandoned site after abandon site.
And, it makes sense. This area is where oil drilling began in Oklahoma. Historical data shows the fields that lay beneath Oologah Lake are part of the Mid-Continent Oil Fields. They were shallow fields, usually less than 1000 feet below the surface, and easily drilled. Records show the first private oil well was drilled along the lake’s shore, near Chelsea, in 1889. But, the boom of those drilling days is long behind us and now, only the debris remains.
“It was everywhere – all over the place,” said Person
“Some of it is under water now. When the lake was a foot to half a foot lower, we covered ground that people hadn’t seen and may not see again,” said Shockley.
The men used their GPS coordinates to plot each spot of debris on a map. OERB environmental teams and contractors used that map to then create a plan of attack for cleaning up the debris. It was a job that cost roughly $36,000 – all paid for by Oklahoma’s oil and natural gas producers and royalty owners, at no cost to taxpayers.
TASKED WITH CARE
Phase one of the restoration was completed back in August 2009. The next phases will begin in coming months as more sites along the lake’s shoreline are discovered and plotted.
Harris, Shockley, Person and others at the Corps’ Tulsa District Office hope their work at Oologah Lake is an example to other Corps offices to seek the help of the OERB.
“We’re tasked to take care of public lands,” said Kent Dunlap, who serves in the Natural Resources and Recreation Branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “What would you do if it was your own yard? You’d clean it up! And that is how I look at it. To me, that’s our job. To find partners. “
“The OERB provided a resource we never would have found or had on our own,” said Shockley.
To date, the OERB has cleaned up more than 10,000 sites across the state and spent more than $58 million on the effort, all funded generously by Oklahoma’s oil and natural gas producers and royalty owners.
“The program’s uniqueness nationwide is outstanding. I’m so surprised by the number of producers willing to put their money back into the program, people willing to do something to help clean up” said Harris. “Who wouldn’t want their backyard cleaned up? As a state citizen, it’s a point of pride.”
If you have an abandoned well site you would like to register with the OERB, please call 1-800-664-1301 or visit www.oerb.com.
