Drillers working with counties on road maintenance in Eagle Ford

Houston Chronicle:

Roads that were meant for the small-town traffic of ranchers and the occasional school bus now are getting pounded by heavy trucks in the Eagle Ford Shale.

To complete a single well in the oil- and gas-rich shale in South Texas, trucks must make hundreds of trips to transport equipment, water and sand to sites for drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Some county roads are dirt or caliche and have become nearly impassable, county officials said.

"These are roads that nobody except Grandpa Schultz and some deer hunters used to use," said DeWitt County Judge Daryl Fowler.

Fowler fears that over the course of the Eagle Ford boom, it could cost upward of $70 million to repair DeWitt County's roads. The county already bumped up, by $1 million, its road and bridge maintenance budget to $3.7 million for this fiscal year.

That won't be quite enough.

So, DeWitt County officials have come up with a plan they hope will at least help remedy the situation: making energy companies pay. Fowler has secured agreements with two drilling companies to pay $8,000 per drilled well for road maintenance. A third deal is in the works.

Fowler anticipates earning about $1.8 million in fiscal year 2012, based on the two companies' plans to drill 225 wells this year. That's still a drop in the bucket, but it's better than nothing, and it's inspired other counties - Dimmit, Bee and Atascosa among them - to follow its model.

Fowler characterized the understanding between the county and drilling companies as "a gentlemanly agreement. They don't have the force of law."

Companies likely are ponying up because they use the roads, too. But one company said its plans to chip in are more altruistic.

"We'll do this for community good will. We want to be good neighbors," said Pam Percival, a spokeswoman for oil field services company FTS International, about its plans to donate to Atascosa County.

... 

There is much more.

Several other counties are looking at the same program.  Road maintenance will clearly be one of the spin off jobs that comes from the development of oil and gas resources in Texas.  Those who suggested the jobs associated with the development of oil and gas were exaggerated were clearly wrong.