Maintenance and Rehabilitation Strategies for Repair of Road Damage Associated with Energy Development and Production

From 10,000 to 24,000 oil and gas wells were permitted each year in Texas during the last decade. The rapid development of the state's oil and gas resources has required large volumes of heavily loaded trucks per well developed. This truck traffic has impacted the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) Farm to Market (FM) road network as well as its trunk State Highway (SH) and United States (US) route designated highways. One of the major issues facing TxDOT maintenance forces is the repair of this impacted road network. The maintenance and repair of the roadway system has required an ever increasing amount of TxDOT's money and workforce. Routine maintenance costs on these FM roadways have increased from typical values of from $500 to $1,500 per centerline mile to $35,000 to $45,000 per centerline mile due to the development of these wells. Repair costs for state and local government roadways have been estimated at 2 billion dollars per year. If financial resources are not available to repair the roadways the cost to the energy development industry due to rough roads (equipment damage and lower operating speeds) could be in the 1.5 to 3.5 billion dollar range annually. It is estimated that TxDOT will expend approximately $500 million annually for maintenance and rehabilitation of roadways impacted by oil and gas development each year for the fiscal years 2015 to 2017. Local governmental agencies are expected to expend over $200 million during this same fiscal year period. This document is intended to assist the Districts with making investment decisions for the maintenance and repair of roadways impacted by oil/gas development and production.