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there are 8,000 producing natural gas
wells in Southwest Virginia and over
4,000 miles of gathering pipelines it's
all overseen by the Virginia Department
of Mines minerals and energies gas and
oil team the division of gas and oils
primary function is to regulate the gas
in oil industry and with that our main
focus is taking care of the environment
and inspecting worker safety on the coal
bed methane with inspectors are in the
field you'll always find an inspector
on-site when the well is drilled and
then cemented they also oversee wells
that are fracked producing wells are
inspected anywhere from once a week up
to seven years that depends on if issues
occur at the site and when the life of a
well is over an inspector will ensure it
is properly plugged we're on-site from
what we refer to is from the cradle to
the grave and that is the time that a
whale is an application they're sent in
for a permit until the time it is
plugged in abandoned the gas in oil team
is also responsible for the inspection
of compressor stations and pipelines
everything up until the natural gas is
sold the rest of the gas and oil team
works at the DMM II Lebanon office this
is where the administrative review of a
permit happens we review water
monitoring data that the company submits
I do
Ernie supplements and transfers a lot of
the things that they inspector approve
as part of the permitting process
I have administrative approval on which
means I do the final reviewing approval
it is also where work to support the
Virginia gas and oil board takes place
everything's doing meant ahead of time
and then that gives us time to review
and if there's any issues we try to work
those out before they get to the board
perhaps the most important board work
was dispersing money trapped in the
board's escrow account this was due to a
conflict over who should receive royalty
payments on coal bed methane wells
legislation in 2015 answered that
question the gas owner
we've distributed a little over 20
million dollars in the last three years
that came with thousands of phone calls
from the public I enjoy like helping
them because a lot of them don't know a
lot about anything related to by their
money's in there and that kind of stuff
joy is a common feeling among the gas
and oil team with their assigned
responsibilities I really enjoy coming
to work every day anytime you can put or
take the environment and and the people
that carries on these activities it's
it's quite an accomplishment
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