Roads, not pipelines, may be biggest threat to growth in oil hotspot. (Bloomberg) – For an oilman who’s worked on the Gulf Coast, near the Russian Arctic and in Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s headquarters in The Hague, being stuck in traffic on a dusty West Texas highway is not the stuff of dreams. The GMC Yukon rented by Amir Gerges, general manager of Shell’s operations in the Permian Basin, has crawled just four miles in the past hour. “That’s probably a truck that rolled over that’s causing this,” Gerges said, speaking from weary experience. Turns out, it’s just routine work on Highway 302, an 83-mile-long, often single-lane road that runs from Odessa, Texas, home to a variety of oilfield servicers, to Loving County, in the western part of the Permian. It’s a stretch that saw traffic jump by 76 percent in 2017, and it’s continued to rise this year. The delay helps Gerges prove a point: Roads, he said, not pipelines, geology or labor shortages, are the biggest long-term threat to sustainable growth in the Permian, the world’s busiest shale oil field. “Almost everything you need at the wellhead is transported by road,” Gerges said. “That’s the one biggest challenge, not just Shell, everyone faces.” ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
That’s in Winkler county…but the same applies to roads in Reeves, Loving, Ward, Pecos,
Culberson, and Hudspeth counties. Roads are in bad shape because of the heavy traffic they bear. The
caliche roads not only rut but the fine caliche dust blocks views out the windshield to as little as 2 feet…which is dangerous since you might run into the back of a truck you’re following or get run over
by a truck coming from the other direction who can’t see either.
Spraying water on the road several times per day will help settle the dust and make travel safer…but
few E&P companies want to have that expense.
, Reeves county, Tx 
