Once the site is prepared and the rig is on location, it gets interesting. While the rig is rigging up, additional supplies such as fuel, mud, chemicals, water, bits, mud motors and sometimes housing must be brought in. Also, additional service companies must be coordinated to arrive when needed. Mud engineers, mud loggers, cementers and directional drillers are part of most modern wells.
Remember that teacher from your early school years that always encouraged you to stay between the lines when coloring? Well, Lindsay Wadsworth never thought much of staying between the lines. So it is ironic that many years later, he earns his living not just by staying within the lines, but by creating them.
In part one of our two-part series on the legal implications of hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") for drillers, published in the January 2013 issue of The Driller, we provided an up-to-date nationwide review of fracking-related litigation in order to illustrate various third-party litigation risks undertaken by those engaged in the practice.