As I’m typing this at 11:45 PM sitting in my home in a residential subdivision in Bossier Parish, Louisiana, I hear a B-52 bomber low overhead preparing to land at Barksdale. I hear a slight knock of the ceiling fan on every other revolution from an off-balanced blade. I hear a train horn and passage of the freight cars. I hear someone out on the state highway demonstrating the acceleration of their 35-year-old IROC Z. 

So, your typical North Louisiana weeknight. 

Am I hearing the sound of American freedom, or an obnoxious, ear-splitting roar that I’m waiting patiently to end? Do I hear essential goods being shipped across country, or an annoying, brain-piercing airhorn at irregular, disruptive intervals? Do I hear a soothing night melody in my bedroom to help me drift off to sleep, or the last gasp of a discontinued, clearance isle, builder-grade fixture? Is that the sound of your teenage years roaring back for a fond recollection, or a Joe Dirt wannabe showing off how much louder his ride is with the open headers.

Are all those I listed just sounds, or noises? Sound is generically defined as vibrations that travel through air or another medium that can be heard when they reach a person’s ear. Noise is sometimes used as a synonym for sound; however, “Noise” is a generally referred to as sound that is unwanted, inappropriate, or harmful.

In reading and researching for this topic, I found a very apt definition of “Noise” from Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary – A stench in the ear. Unwanted and harmful sounds fit that definition perfectly. 

Oil and Gas operations have been commonplace in many regions of the country for longer than some of the readers of this submission have been alive. There is no doubt the scale and intensity of these operations have increased in the last 10 years as both demand for petroleum products and technology to unlock previously inaccessible reserves has grown. Combined with population growth and residential development of previously rural sectors of the community, the proximity of oil and gas operations to greater concentrations of the public at large is becoming commonplace. As people have moved closer to well sites, and well sites have moved closer to people, the inevitable conflict of sharing the same spaces has put pressure on oil and gas operators and municipalities to cooperate in a restructure of how to balance efficient resource development with the least possible disruption to the communities.

Click here to read more on noise abatement from Steven Roberts, Completion and Production Engineer. 

• Improving your Environmental, Social, and Governance scorecard.
• Avoiding unnecessary fees and ad valorem taxes.
• Reduction in liability and operating expenses.
• Current premium prices for salvage tubulars and equipment.

On November 15, 2021, EPA published two proposed rules that would amend the scope of the current NSPS 60 OOOOa regulation that applies to new or modified oil and gas production sites that came online after September 18, 2015.

The proposed NSPS 60 OOOOb applies to oil and gas production sites that came online after November 15, 2021, and adds additional emission reduction requirements that include:

• Zero bleed pneumatic controllers that use natural gas.
• 95% control on truck loading operations.
• Defines a tank battery as a single storage vessel when determining if the six ton per year VOC threshold is exceeded requiring a closed vent system and control or capture equipment.
• Adds methane reduction requirements to the current volatile organic compounds.
• Increases fugitive monitoring survey frequency from semiannual to quarterly for sites with greater than eight tons per year of methane emissions.