Why not stick the giant oil well in front of my house

I am a horrible person. I've seen these wells going up for years now. We were confident (based on the maps server for our county) that the well for our section was going to be over a hill and out of sight. Minimal impact on our life. Sucks to be the people with them close to their houses. Now they're out sticking flags into the ground in the wheat field RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR HOUSE and now I'm like AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Things I am currently mourning:

the ability to see the stars. Thanks oil rig light pollution.
Silence. Forever. Particularly if they put those giant fans on it.
pure air. nuff said
the ability to allow my kids out to wander without worry. Yeah, say what you want but while there are transient oil workers about my kids WILL NOT be wandering the property unsupervised.
safety. Robberies have already gone up. Perhaps unrelated but I doubt it since they came with the oil drilling.
my pristine view. Seriously. We could see for miles because other than our section it's ALL WHEAT FIELDS around here.
the ability to walk/ride bikes on our road. Oil traffic is INSANE and really unsafe. We've almost been killed I don't know how many times driving, no way I'd risk it on foot.
I'd say our water supply but that's already been screwed up so...

We own our mineral rights so we will get money from this but I'd rather they kept their money and I kept my sanctuary. :(

And there's my whine for the day.

Time to move. Maybe rent your home if you can and pull some money out of your house (increase your mortgage) and then use that to build another house.

Oh man, that sucks.

We live in an oilfield developed in the 20s. There are two small derricks pumping a few barrels a day on our 40 acres, 100 years later. Plus more in sight from our front yard, across the road.

It may be different with modern high-volume wells, but in this old field, the lights and traffic and people is usually only when they are developing or reworking a well.

But the noise of the wellhead equipment is always there. It’s not terrible, but it’s constant. The traffic dies down to a couple vehicles a day (monitoring and maintenance). Smells are intermittent — if there’s enough gas escaping to smell, they really are probably violating their air quality operating permits. Nonetheless this happens a lot, especially in calm air inversion conditions.

You have my sympathies! It’s going to suck unbelievably during development. But there’s hope it might be better (not good, but better) once the well is up and running.)

Elle Sagenev - I'm so sorry, your situation sucks!! The 'big fans' are compressors on a pipeline - so maybe that won't happen. I totally agree about your children. Lots of drugs in the oil and gas fields. I plan to carry when I am on my property alone. Some smell on finished well pads. The intermittent bad smell I think comes from a O & G disposal facility about a mile away.
Wyoming must be one of the states where mineral rights have precendence over surface rights.

Did you ever wonder why oilfield guys always wear sleeveless sweatshirts?  

I finally figured it out while walking my dogs near one of the wellheads on our property.  One of the guys had walked out behind a tree to take a dump, then torn off the sleeve of his shirt to wipe his butt with.  Then left it beside the "pile".  No effort to bury or cover anything.

I guess carrying a roll of TP in your truck is too complicated for a roughneck?

I'm so sorry.  :(  I can imagine how awful it feels to see your sanctuary tainted this way and know it's going to get worse (at least for awhile).  :(

So my husband informed me that the set up out here partially refines the oil as it comes out. I took a pic of one off the road today (not the one on our road as they haven't started it yet). You can see a bit to the right of the pic there's a big stack. This one obviously isn't done being built but the majority of what you see in this pic remains when they are finished. Just not the giant rig in the middle. :(

Dan Boone wrote:Did you ever wonder why oilfield guys always wear sleeveless sweatshirts?  

I finally figured it out while walking my dogs near one of the wellheads on our property.  One of the guys had walked out behind a tree to take a dump, then torn off the sleeve of his shirt to wipe his butt with.  Then left it beside the "pile".  No effort to bury or cover anything.

I guess carrying a roll of TP in your truck is too complicated for a roughneck?

Gross. Thanks for that visual!

denise ra wrote:Elle Sagenev - I'm so sorry, your situation sucks!! The 'big fans' are compressors on a pipeline - so maybe that won't happen. I totally agree about your children. Lots of drugs in the oil and gas fields. I plan to carry when I am on my property alone. Some smell on finished well pads. The intermittent bad smell I think comes from a O & G disposal facility about a mile away.
Wyoming must be one of the states where mineral rights have precendence over surface rights.

So it's not ON our property. It's on the wheat field in front of us.

Most of Wyoming's revenue comes from coal, oil, gas, etc so we are VERY VERY friendly to those types of industries. Here we thought all we had to dread about that wheat field was the eventual subdivision of it. I think I'd prefer that now!

How horrible...I'm so sorry Elle!

Our county almost put a large landfill next to our homestead. It would have totally ruined the view, caused noise and who knows what poisons. Luckily they had another site option and that site turned out to be more economical to build so they chose that. But we are living in a "logistically optimal" area: quite near a big highway, so there's plans like that coming up all the time.

National electric grid line now goes very near our homestead. We lost that fight. The grid was put on our neighbour's land. The county just expropriated the land despite his bitter objections . He's a local "bigwheel", has lots of land, but he had no say in the matter.

I saw in the news today that there's a big war rehearsal happening in Finland. Throughout its 100-year history as an independent country, Finland has been a neutral country not belonging to  to NATO or any other such organisation. Now, our latest goverment has gone and changed our legislation so they can invite US troops here to lead a war rehearsal. Yes, lead it. How's that for an independent, neutral country supposedly famous for its diplomacy and peace-making?

I could go on and on with these local and national horror news, but I stop here.

I can't help but wonder, is there anything more we permies could do to stop these madnesses like war rehearsals and oil drilling? I don't mean on a global scale but on a local scale? I mean, it's obvious we won't be homesteading and infecting brains with permaculture if our water's poisoned or our fields become oil fields or war rehearsal zones...