Helis Set To Begin Controversial Drilling Project In St. Tammany

Source: The New Orleans Advocate

Standing under a drilling apparatus that reaches nearly 200 feet into the air, Helis Oil & Gas Co. project manager Mike Barham said Monday the company could start drilling its controversial St. Tammany Parish well as early as Wednesday.

The drilling rig has been assembled, thousands of feet of pipe are stacked nearby and three 600-horsepower diesel engines hummed as Barham led a group on a brief tour of the site.

When the bit finally punctures the surface, it will be the culmination of more than two years of work, legal wrangling and public debate in St. Tammany, normally and oil-industry friendly parish.

The Helis project — which could eventually make use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking — has been controversial almost from the start, drawing a challenge from opponents who packed public meetings, fought permits and forced the parish council to spend nearly $200,000 suing the state.

That fight isn’t over — in a last gasp move, the parish council and the group Concerned Citizens of St. Tammany have asked the state Supreme Court to reconsider the court’s refusal to hear their appeal of a lower court ruling.

For now, however, the work on the three-acre pad is going forward, and Barham was eager to show not just the drilling rig, but also some of the environmental safety measures the company has put into place: a dozen wells that will be used to test water quality, a stormwater collection and filtration system and an air monitoring station.

He also showed an array of trailers housing offices, work stations and space for the crews to eat and sleep when they aren’t working 12-hour shifts on the rig.

But the tour was dominated by the rig itself and the surrounding tanks, pumps and engines that will be brought to bear digging a 2-mile-deep hole in the earth.

Drilling the vertical well and dismantling the drilling rig should take about 30 days. Then it will be several months while the company analyzes the test results before they decide if they want to go to phase two, which would mean using horizontal drilling and fracking to extract oil from the well.

The use of fracking has helped the U.S. lessen its dependence on foreign sources of oil, but it has also been blamed for a litany of environmental and health problems.

Recently, the drop in the price of oil has forced many fracking companies out of the industry, but Helis has insisted that the price of oil will have no impact on its plans.

In the meantime, St. Tammany Parish and Concerned Citizens of St. Tammany are asking the state Supreme Court to reconsider hearing their appeal of a First Circuit Court of Appeal decision from earlier this year. The parish and CCST have sued the state and Helis, arguing that the parish’s zoning laws prevent heavy industrial activity, such has oil drilling, at the site.

A state district court judge ruled against them last year, the appeals court refused to overturn that ruling and the Supreme Court refused earlier this month to hear the case.