What's in a name? Addresses for drilling sites include tall men and dead pigs

• Marie Cusick
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  Marie Cusick was the Harrisburg reporter for StateImpact Pennsylvania.

If you’re walking in Sproul State Forest and come upon a brown sign with white lettering that reads, “Little Texas Lane”, you can safely assume the path leads to a Marcellus Shale gas well.
That’s because a two-year-old law requires Marcellus sites to have official addresses and clear signage. It’s an effort to improve safety, so first responders will know exactly where to go in the event of an emergency.
The state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) has had to come up with new names for previously unnamed state forest roads and access-ways to gas pad sites.
Some of them are mundane– like Pad Eight Lane and Pad Ten Lane– both home to an Exco gas wells. Others have more character. Anadarko Petroleum has addresses at Little Texas Lane, Texaco Lane, Artesian Well Lane, Tall Man Lane, and Dead Pig Lane.
DCNR spokeswoman Chris Novak says district forest staff chose the road names. They were based on physical features of the landscape or names of land tracts from former timber sales.
“As an example, when you look at a map of the [timber sale tract] that was named ‘Dead Pig,’ it’s shape looked like a pig,” she writes in an email.
In the case of Texaco and Little Texas Lane, Novak says the names are a nod to Pennsylvania’s history with drilling. The roads are on a tract of land that was home to an old Texaco well.
She adds the department has been working to come up with names for many other roads and land parcels unrelated to gas drilling to help coordinate emergency responses.
 

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