Fayetteville Shale Play

Crafton Tull has surveyed millions of acres for wells and natural gas pipelines throughout the Fayetteville Shale natural gas field located in north-central Arkansas. The Fayetteville Shale Play area covers most of White, Cleburne, Van Buren, Pope, Johnson, Conway, and Faulkner Counties. To meet our client’s needs quickly and accurately, we developed innovative methods to survey this heavily wooded and mountainous region.

Our surveyors reviewed section breakdown for over 2,500 sections in rural areas, as well as platting and staking for over 1,500 natural gas well sites, including locations staked on federal lands. The over 7 million feet of right-of-way surveyed for pipeline routes included staking the right-of-way location, preparing exhibits for construction and right-of-way acquisition, and writing legal descriptions to be recorded. Our Energy Division prepared plan/profile drawings required by regulatory agencies for large stream crossings, highway permits, and plat preparation for permitting on federal lands.

The rugged ridges and hillsides of north-central Arkansas make surveying in this area challenging. Because of this, our clients needed preconstruction route surveys for pipeline easements, boundary surveys for facilities, well location surveys for permitting, and construction documents. Speed, accuracy, and GIS compatibility were critical.

Crafton Tull’s creation of the state’s only Virtual Reference Station (VRS™) network increased production over conventional GPS by 20 percent, without additional cost to our clients. This Real-Time Network eliminates the need to set up a base station for each survey project and broadcasts real-time position corrections to surveyors, which produces unparalleled accuracy, mobility, and reliability.

To prevent overlapping right-of-way, or in some cases trespassing, without compromising private data, our team collected the majority of pipeline rights-of-way and well locations for other oil and gas companies in the area.