Fayetteville Shale Play

LOCATION:  North Central Arkansas

Crafton Tull has surveyed millions of acres for wells and natural gas pipelines throughout the Fayetteville Shale natural gas field in north central Arkansas. The Fayetteville Shale Play area covers most of White, Cleburne, Van Buren, Pope, Johnson, Conway, and Faulkner Counties. Responding to our clients needs, we developed innovative ways to survey this heavily wooded and mountainous region faster and accurately. Our surveyors were responsible for reviewing section breakdown for over 700 sections in rural areas and platting and staking for over 1,500 natural gas well sites, which include locations that were staked on Federal Government lands. Over 5 million feet of right of way for pipeline routes were surveyed, which included: staking the right of way location, preparing exhibits for construction, right of way acquisition, and writing legal descriptions to be recorded. The Energy Division was responsible for preparing plan/profile drawings for regulatory agencies for projects that required large stream crossings, highway permits, and preparation of plats for permitting on Federal Government Lands.

Rugged ridges and hillsides of north central Arkansas make surveying in this area a challenge. With little accessibility, our clients needed pre-construction route surveys for pipeline easements, boundary surveys for facilities, construction documents, and well location surveys for permitting. It was critical to get the information fast, make it accurate, and in a format compatible with GIS.

Crafton Tull’s creation of the state’s only Real Time Network (RTN) increased production over conventional GPS by 20 percent without additional costs to the clients. The Real Time Network eliminates the need to set up a base station for each survey project and broadcasts real-time position corrections to surveyors, producing unparalleled accuracy, mobility and reliability.

The installation of the Real Time Network means our surveyors can start each day surveying, instead of setting up a base station. Each surveyor has a Global Position System to map coordinates and collect survey data – producing unparalleled mobility and accuracy.

We also have collected the majority of pipeline right-of-ways and well locations for other oil and gas companies in the area. This helps prevent overlapping right-of-way, or in some cases trespassing, without compromising private data. .