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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

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Incredibly false.

A typical "large" rig will need a 100m x 100m drill pad, roads to access which are often highly controlled during the design phase.

A drilling rig will remain on location for MAYBE 30-40 days if it is a deep well (2000m-7000m).

A completions rig (aka service rig) will come out afterwards to complete the well (install downhole equipment / frac / get the well ready for production). Lease may be a bit bigger if large frac. Been a drilling engineer for 15+ years so haven't really seen too many fracs.

I don’t like oil drilling but even without your experience it’s clear GP’s assertion is nonsense. There are still oil wells all over Los Angeles in parking lots and tucked between buildings, which is a contradicting existence proof.

I can imagine in a big oil field like in Midland, TX they have a lot of sprawling operations that take up a lot of room. But that doesn’t have to be the only way.

Even the drill site in Beverly Hills on W. Pico is 2 acres. But the wildlife impact of drilling for oil in Beverly Hills is zero, whereas the wildlife impact of drilling for oil in the middle of nowhere is higher.

So you're aware of a drill site that is much less than 5 acres, but you were comfortable stating:

"Every oil rig scrapes everything off five acres of land"

So 2-1/2 acres plus roads, instead of 5 acres, and you address how long, which OP didn't mention, in no way disputing him. Not a basis for leading with "incredibly false."

Perhaps you are correct - I had hectares in my mind for some reason while reading his original comment. My bad.

Seriously, every hole results in an eventual dump, tank, yard, road, or some other dang thing and the net land wrecked per operation is five acres.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/sKfYNokGcidWLGTQ7

Windmill farms have roads also. Traveling in Illinois recently and seeing some huge 300+ft windmills in the corn and soybean fields, I think that is a perfect place for them. The whole scene is quite artificial and totally human controlled. The windmills fit right in. I don't think they should be placed on wilderness type lands. Similar to a fracking operation, you have a dense network of roads and the moving, man-made objects are quite jarring on the landscape. And unlike oil or gas extraction those sites will likely be in use for hundreds of years instead of a few decades.

Sheesh. That's insane.

My understanding is that East California is like that too. Not sure the status as of today and if this is still permitted or not? Look up some images from LA in the early oil boom - crazy.

Here's an example of them in Alberta (where I am familiar): https://maps.app.goo.gl/73x4uKZxWKbZkgD76

In 2023 California almost halted drilling permits, but mainly because the governor has national office ambitions and he was starting to get some criticism from the hypocrisy of having overseen 10000+ new oil permits during his tenure.

"Everything in moderation, including moderation" comes to mind.

If that were true then Los Angeles would be an uninhabitable wasteland. Jokes aside, it’s clearly not true.

>So 2-1/2 acres plus roads, instead of 5 acres

Just an exaggeration of 100%, no big deal?

My parents rented land on which there was a smaller oil rig. The rig was eventually removed and now the land is used for farming.

OTOH I cannot image how they want to do this with the conrete foundations of wind turbines. The newer ones are up to 300 meters high. With that leverage the foundations must be absolutely massive. I don't think they can ever be revmoved.

The wind is probably less likely to run out like the oil rig did.

Exactly. Replace the turbine with another turbine when it reaches EOL.

I just read about it and here the foundations are usually removed. At least that is what they claim.

Yeah... Could you explain why any oil company would pay to install and maintain "daylight level" lighting equipment at every oil rig, then pay the electric bills to run it all night, 365 nights per year?

Security? Maintenance? 24/7 ops?

It's not a crazy claim; here's a NASA article on fracking wells being very visible from space at night. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/87725/shale-revolut...

Pretty sure that's because of flaring excess gas.

I suspect this is conflating wells with flaring, which can be a pretty big problem across a huge area. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-scotland-54435653 (Mossmorran flare, Exxon-Mobil)

No.

https://www.nabors.com/for-contractors-ofs/rig-products/illu...

A lot of people in this thread are showing themselves to be people without any personal contact with oil exploration.

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