Drilling doesn’t take that much water. I used to work out on a rig in the desert. The water was brought out once in awhile in a tanker truck. Most of it was just recirculated down (and up) the well.
As far as other environmental aspects - modern drilling is pretty clean, it has to be with all of the regulations involved. Of course a few new dirt roads will traverse his property.
I wonder if his grandparent’s ever got shut down or sued when their chocolate batches stunk up the neighborhood?
But in order to get the methane out of the coal bed (desorbtion), the water has to be pumped out.
Coal beds are commonly near-surface aquifers in the Northern Powder River Basin (and in the Williston Basin as well), and the drawdown of the aquifers may be the reason for the complaint.
Wells for both human and livestock consumption produce water from the coals. I'd bet a large number of stock wells on the ranch draw water from the coals, which is expensive to change--if you can.
I had the same thought. Drilling itself won't use much water. And any water produced along with oil would likely not be potable water but would be very salty. However, water might be injected into underground oil reservoirs late in field life to maintain reservoir pressure and recover more oil. I suspect that injected water could come from deep formations rather than surface water.
They might have more of a water loss problem from a coal discovery if a coal slurry pipeline is used to transport the coal. Here's one such pipeline in Nevada that uses a billion gallons of water a year. Link.
Coal could be transported in train cars. Miles and miles of train cars. And what happens if the coal is shallow and the economic way to produce it is strip mining.
I think the Mars people are right to be worried, but legally they may be out of luck unless they can buy the mineral rights or the company planning development.
Since I’m familiar with both areas you’re talking about (a desert drilling situation, say, here in Nevada) and that area of Montana/Wyoming, here’s some perspective from a farmer:
In Nevada, (and many desert areas) what you have is alluvial infill in the valley areas. Much of our oil/gas drilling in Nevada is now happening up on benches above the valley floors, because the net:net distance to the oil/gas bearing layers are shorter from up on a bench than in a valley floor.
The issue with water in Nevada is of course, highly political and charged, but the general water development is for water in the alluvial fill in the valleys, recharged by snowmelt coming down off the mountains. The impact of oil/gas drilling in desert alluvium formations is minimal, since once you hit a water bearing layer, it is typically water from there on down.
Now, let’s shift up to that area of MT/WY where this fella is. There are “perched” water tables up above the coal bearing layers. If you drill through these water bearing layers and down into the coal, you’ll quite possibly drain the water out of the water bearing layer up high and cause significant and irreversible damage to water wells in the higher strata.
We see this rarely in Nevada, usually only in very select areas where we have a boundary layer of hard calcium carbonate, which we call “caliche.” Sometimes, you see these very isolated perched water tables holding water above, oh, 40 to 50’ in depth - and if you punch through that layer, there’s nothing but dry sand and gravel for at least 100’ further down. At 40 to 50’ water tables, deeply-rooted grasses and alfalfa can reach that naturally. At 100+ feet deep, there’s no way to “sub-irrigate” a meadow.
As far as I’m concerned, the guy has a legit beef if the oil/gas drillers aren’t sealing their wells and are allowing perched water to drop out the bottom.