Fractracker Must Thrive and Survive by Your Comments

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There has been some very good comments from Fractracker contributors, and I would like to share and help to facilitate further commenting…

1) Many of the data sets currently uploaded to Fractracker are from the PADEP’s “2010 Permit and RIG Activity,” under “Reports” from the Bureau or Oil and Gas Management Home Page. These are open to the public.
2) The PADEP provides permit information prior to the January 1, 2007 date, but NOT in the form of “RIG” reports. The RIG report includes an explicit location such as latitude and longitude that is necessary for visualization in Fractracker. The PADEP did not start transferring hard-copy forms into digital data sets of permits and drilled locations until 2007. Therefore, any Marcellus Shale drilled prior to the January 1, 2007 digitizing date is not included in the permit or SPUD data on Fractracker.
3) We have received comments that the Permits and Drilling locations data sets are missing data, incomplete, and or the locations can be off by as much as 15 miles. These are great comments and are integral to sharing and regulating good vs. bad information. It is certainly possible that these data sets are incomplete, missing data, and are not as precise as we hope.
4) Possibilities of seemingly incomplete data sets and maps; drilled wells and permit locations may not exist in Fractracker because they are wells that predate the January 1, 2007 digitizing date (see above), human error in transferring data to digital version, uploading to the host, data sets simply are incomplete, and location accuracy of drilled wells may be generalized.
5) The power of crowdsourcing programs such as Wikipedia, Netflix and Amazon ratings, Facebook, OpenStreetMap, and of course Fractracker allows the “crowd” or many people to assist by contributing their knowledge or experience to refine tasks, regulate information, and develop highly quality controlled outputs.
6) Comments and collaboration on the blog as well as within individual data sets, snapshots, etc., is not only encouraged, it is crucial to the principle of Fractracker.
1 reply
  1. Anonymous
    Anonymous says:

    >Today, July23, 2010, at 9:30 AM a shallow (3500") gas well, 15 miles northeast of Pittsburgh blew up killing 2 workers. I hope you are right on top of this!

    Bob K. Wilkes Barre, PA

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