Hydraulic Fracturing Photo Gallery

The photographs below depict the typical gas well drilling operations found in Texas. Starting with a sand mining operation, then a well pad site that is being drilled and finally the ravages of natural gas production. The photos show how a heavy industrial site looks and operates, including the drilling process, open pit frac ponds, completed well site, gas separators to remove contaminants before putting gas into the pipelines, gas gathering lines, pipeline infrastructure to move gas from the gathering station to the compressor station, compresssors and associated infrastructure to further remove condensates and put compressed gas on the commercial pipelines. The final photo is of the San Bruno, California gas pipeline explosion in 2010 that killed 8 people, destroyed 38 homes and severely damaged another 120 homes - the explosion was felt 10 miles away at San Francisco International Airport.

These photos were taken in 2010-2011 at sand mining operations in Muenster and Brady, Texas, a sand mine in Wisconsin, three Chesapeake and XTO gas well sites and one Midstream Compressor Station site in Arlington, Texas, at locations in Fort Worth and Tarrant County, Texas, at the Chesapeake Nomac-17 rig explosion and fire in Oklahoma in 2012, and at the san bruno pipeline explosion in 2010. In some photos you can clearly see the distance to residential homes is quite short. At the Eden SW site where the gathering station photos were taken the distance to homes is perhaps 200 feet.