Multi Pad Drilling Could Minimise CSG Environmental Impact

Multi-well pad drilling could be used in Australia’s Northern Rivers region to reduce the gas industry's noise and visual footprint on nearby residents, Northern Star, a local newspaper, quotes Rick Wilkinson, chief technical officer of the Australian peak oil and gas body APPEA, as saying.

Wilkinson spoke to about 20 farmers, landholders and councillors from the region on Thursday about Queensland's decade-long experience with the coal seam gas industry, Northern Star reports.

According to the newspaper, he suggested building five or six wells in a strategic location instead of dotting them about the landscape as an idea to minimise impacts on the environment such as roads and noise.

Wells in a multi-well pad travel vertically down and then shoot off horizontally in different directions, in a hub and spokes pattern.

He said the industry could adjust well to its landscape, for example where activity was taking place on a cropping property wells were drilled between the fields.

Wilkinson said treated production water was purer than what came out the tap in places like Roma, and even had to be diluted before it could be used for irrigation, adds Northern Star.