American oil wells

I have a question that I'm not sure where to ask, or whom to ask it of.
So...I'll ask here.

I live in northwest Ohio.
In the past few months, I've noticed that the old oil wells, that have been here for years, have recently come to life.
They (the people who deal with these things) have been visiting (re-visiting) these wells.
They have put towers up on the well sites. The towers look very similar to antenna towers, but are about 40 feet tall and have white, yellow, and red lights on them.
I'm not sure what any of this means, but they are very lit up at night, and are visible for miles.

I work for an air ambulance service in the area, and I flew last night, and I noticed that there are HUNDREDS of these things all over the damn place.
I never knew that. I thought there were but a few of these, but from the air, at 1500 feet you can see that there are tons of them all over the place.

My question is: What the ????

What are they doing with these things?

The old timers in the area have told me that they never pumped the oil out of these wells when they were originally drilled 20-30 years ago. They drilled, struck oil and "capped" them.
Whatever that means.

So....does the activity that I am seeing mean that they are going to finally pump the oil out and use it?
Or what the heck is going on here?

Just thought I would throw this out there and see if any of you fine folks know anything about.

I realize that even if the Northwestern Ohio Oil wells had more oil than Saudi Arabia it wouldn't do anything to reduce our gas prices = greedy bastards.

Usually what happens, Ken, is that less productive wells are capped and the people who own them retain the mineral rights until which point it becomes profitable for them to put forth the expense to pump oil from low-yield wells and transport the goods to market. This often happens when oil prices jump quickly due to speculation. These small well owners (usually large corporations, just small wells) will pump us much out of them as is profitable until prices begin to slip, when that happens, they cap them and wait for the next jump.

Same goes with natural gas.

with soaring gas prices its now worth it to tap more expensive oil wells. Look at it this way, you know what increased supply does to prices.

we could really use some sort of air powered car right about now...

I live in Seneca County.

Little town of Bloomville.

It isn't the end of the world, but you can see it from here.

What type of helos do you guys fly, a Eurocopter of some sort I would assume?  What is your job?  All the air ambulance people I've seen are damn good at what they do.

GI JOES SON wrote: we could really use some sort of air powered car right about now...

I know of a type of car that runs on 93% air.

mabby when they drill like crazy gas will be one $1.50 again. (good ol days

tallen702 wrote: paintball437085 wrote: mabby when they drill like crazy gas will be one $1.50 again. (good ol days uh... when I was in college, it was $1.36/gal and I thought that was insane. When I was in High School, it was $0.99/gal

When I was in high school it was under $2

Now I am in college, and it is just about $4.

This sucks.



EDIT: Hah I just checked gas prices for while I was in high school. Found a news story that says. "Gas hits record high. $1.73 a gallon"
I want to cry.


Edited by jmac3 - 18 May 2008 at 9:01pm

Ken Majors wrote: I live in Seneca County. Little town of Bloomville. It isn't the end of the world, but you can see it from here.

i think i ve been through there before

stick_boy_2002 wrote: Ken Majors wrote: I live in Seneca County. Little town of Bloomville. It isn't the end of the world, but you can see it from here. i always thought bloomville was the end of the world.

You havent seen the end of the world untill you live in Fort Peck Montana.