# Working Outdoors



## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

I have been working outdoors, a welcome change.

I'm in Wyoming's Red Desert, brown mostly, from all us ******** tearing everthing up to get at the hydrocarbon honey.

Dozens of antelope surround our worksite, some may score, IMHO, in the low 80's. There are wild horses, peregrine falcons, owls, sage grouse, songbirds of all kinds, lizards, snakes, prairie dogs, jack, cottontail and pygmy rabbits, coyote, fox, even elk. And there's not a tree for miles.

We are just a few miles from Interstate 80 in the part of Wyoming that everyone calls "ugly", or says "there's nothing there".

Here's a few pics:

Roads, powerlines, gas wells, and pipeline facilities abound.









Seen 6 elk last week at this water hole. It's right on the Interstate 80 highway fence.









This is a very nice goat. There are bigger ones.


These teenage bucks come on the worksite even with the machinery running.


There's a big patch of healthy lambsquarter around us. Discharge from a nearby fresh water well keeps the plant and the antelope watered up. This group is all bucks.


More later.


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## redleg (Dec 5, 2007)

I think wildlife live better around oil rigs. They certainly aren’t scared away like the Libs say.


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

redleg said:


> I think wildlife live better around oil rigs. They certainly aren't scared away like the Libs say.


Up to a certain point. My work area has a small oil and natural gas impact at the moment. Here the BLM allows up to 46% of the land to be impacted (tore up) by mineral developements.

There's 4,500 gas wells outside of Pinedale Wyoming. see:




There are plans to drill 10,000 more, right in the middle of (what used to be) the biggest antelope herd on the planet.


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## HunterGeek (Sep 13, 2007)

redleg said:


> I think wildlife live better around oil rigs. They certainly aren't scared away like the Libs say.


This isn't just an academic liberal vs. conservative political issue. Remember, the word "conservative" come from the same root word as conserve and conservation. There is nothing conservative about thousands of square miles of important habitat being bulldozed over and destroyed.

I don't think that most people even begin to appreciate the extent of these drilling operations - they're immensely numerous, dense packed and denude many hundreds of square miles of vegetation. They're destroying extremely important winter ranges and migratory paths. Thousands of dirt roads criss-cross in every imaginable direction, filling the air with hundreds of tons of thick dust.

We complain about ATV trails being illegally created in sensitive areas, but these drilling operations are having effects a thousand-fold more severe than anything 50,000 ATVs could do in a decade of off-road marauding.

Below is a Google Earth satellite photo from an area south of Pinedale, Wyoming. And this isn't just an isolated photo - these things stretch for miles and miles. And it's not just confined to Wyoming - the area a ways south of Vernal, Utah, looks pretty much just like it. The military could have used these areas for intensive aerial bombing practice for decades and it wouldn't have done nearly the damage to the habitat that these drilling operations have managed to do in the last few years. Really, it's mind boggling.

[attachment=0:mqdarx76]pinedale_wy.jpg[/attachment:mqdarx76]


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

HunterGeek said:


> redleg said:
> 
> 
> > I think wildlife live better around oil rigs. They certainly aren't scared away like the Libs say.
> ...


Geeze, I wrote a reply with that very photo included, but took it out because I thought it had would have copyright problems.

Yes, the Red Wash and Bonanza Gas fields in Utah are starting to be, in my opinion, over-developed.

You can easily drill 15 wells off a 110 ft square deck offshore. Why can't we do the same onshore? Answer is $$$$$$$$, and an unwillingness of past oil-friendly Federal and State Congresses to mandate minimizing the impact of oil and gas exploration and developement on BLM and State land.

Every well site gets a one to five acre pad, a pipeline, a road, a powerline, a waste pond or two, and a gas-fired boiler, among a variety of other equipment. Take all that times the 15,000 wellsites planned in northeast Utah and you can kiss much of the wildlife goodbye. In addition, there's dehydration plants, compressor stations, process plants, valve settings, switch gear yards, offices, mancamps, storage yards, blah, blah, blah. The enviromental impact is enormous.

The mighty blue-ribbon trout waters of the Green and New Fork rivers up in Wyoming's Sublette County could end up like the Bear River in Uinta County, ruined from soil runoff from oil and gas developement.


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## Bears Butt (Sep 12, 2007)

Besides all of the ruined forage, devastated land etc. goes our rights to hunt on these same lands. It basically becomes the ownership of the oil company. KEEP OUT! And so, it becomes a refuge for these animals. No wonder they like to come around for the photo ops, next year they will be bigger.


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## Huge29 (Sep 17, 2007)

Price is starting to look similar with those wells all over the place. Being my old stomping grounds; I did not like the looks of it at all. Those were pretty remote places that were awesome to hike and feel pretty remote. Not anymore, big roads with heavy roadbase going in every direction reaching every remote corner...


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

The sooner we wean ourselves off this ever-increasing dependence on oil and gas, the better off we'll be. If we can manage to do so before we manage to bulldoze over Wyoming and Utah trying to extract every whiff of gas and every droplet of oil, so much the better.[/quote][/quote]

The same companies that operate in the Gulf of Mexico operate in Utah and Wyoming. The gas and oil business in the Gulf of Mexico, where drilling many wells off of one small footprint, is governed by the Coast Guard, the USGS, DOT Part 192, and state rules.....much different than onshore. The rules are much tougher, the price to produce is extremely high, yet they still keep exploring and producing out in the Gulf. The gas offshore is sweet and dry, the gas in Utah and Wyoming is mostly sour and wet, adding to the cost of production. My guess is the margins are about the same per mmcf of natural gas whether onshore or offshore.


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## Snipe (Dec 4, 2008)

what does it look like when they are done with it? Are they required to replace vegetation? How long do they use one well site?


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## redleg (Dec 5, 2007)

is there anyone in this forum who doesnt support building more nuclear power plants? 
We could continue to live in a free country where people dont die of heatstroke in the summer or freeze in the winter. Food would continue to be available and you could travel to work, to school, and to the hospital as needed.


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## Yonni (Sep 7, 2007)

redleg said:


> is there anyone in this forum who doesnt support building more nuclear power plants?
> We could continue to live in a free country where people dont die of heatstroke in the summer or freeze in the winter. Food would continue to be available and you could travel to work, to school, and to the hospital as needed.


+1 on more nuclear power, I grew up in NH, they have a nuclear plant, I see no REAL issues with them!


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## Trooper (Oct 18, 2007)

Nuke is the best we have at this point in time- I hate the way it's been demonized by well-meaning, but ignorant people.


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## proutdoors (Sep 24, 2007)

Bears Butt said:


> Besides all of the ruined forage, devastated land etc. goes our rights to hunt on these same lands. It basically becomes the ownership of the oil company. KEEP OUT! And so, it becomes a refuge for these animals. No wonder they like to come around for the photo ops, next year they will be bigger.


We have no rights to hunt anything anywhere.


Trooper said:


> Nuke is the best we have at this point in time- I hate the way it's been demonized by well-meaning, but ignorant people.


You just summed up the Democratic Party perfectly. Well done! :wink: They do the same thing with guns, free speech, capitalism, private property rights, etc.. :evil:


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## Nor-tah (Dec 16, 2007)

Al for nuclear... the squeeky wheel libs wont let it happen. They are too busy flying around in their leers. :roll:


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## proutdoors (Sep 24, 2007)

Al Gore has made so much cash with his Climate Change fear mongering that he wouldn't be caught dead in a Leer, he uses Gulf Streams. Leers are for pathetic conservatives.


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

More nice antelope, a few coyotes, and some wild horses at work today.

Here's some wild horses being led by a feral jake mule:









Seen the most Loggerhead Shrikes ever in one day today.


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

Nor-tah said:


> Al for nuclear... the squeeky wheel libs wont let it happen. They are too busy flying around in their leers. :roll:


It's "squeaky" and probably hypanated "squeaky-wheel". And from a guy that knows how to spell "too". Good grief.

Ah....what's a squeaky-wheel lib?


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

It looked better from the ground.

Ah.....road hunting for antelope would be an option.


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

Nor-tah said:


> Al for nuclear... the squeeky wheel libs wont let it happen. They are too busy flying around in their leers. :roll:












Red dots on the map show nuclear power plants built in the USA. Most were built in, and/or operate in, squeeky wheel liberal states.

None can be found in Utah or Wyoming, historically conservative states. Note that normally coal states, Wyoming and Utah for example, keep nuke plants out. Looks like coal states Illinois and Pennsylvania are exceptions.


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