Here Joe Fox, owner of Fox Surveying, locates the area where an oil well will be drilled.
Often a simply wooden stake locates the exact point that a well will be drilled.
Joe Fox determines the location of an oil well using a hand held GPS unit.
Trees are cleared and a road bed is graded.
A small excavator clears brush.
A larger excavator loads a dump truck with 22 tons of stone.
Mr. Vincent takes the stone and makes a level road.
The drilling rig uses 25 foot sections of pipe to drill the well.
Every 25 feet a connection is made with a new section of drill pipe.
A roustabout gets ready to lift another section of pipe.
The threads on the end of a piece of drill pipe are visible.
A geology technician collects samples of drilled oil bearing formation at the well site for later analysis.
Central Electric installing new poles and wire to provide power for the pump jacks.
Notching is a process in which a groove is cut in to a sand stone layer. This makes completion of the well easier.
A single oil well will receive numerous stages during completion. This is the flowback from a stage.
A excavator sets a new 210 barrel tank for the oil production inside a dike wall.
An oil tank gets a fresh coat of paint.
A flatbed truck delivers a dozen new pump jacks to the oil lease.
After drilling and completing the well a new pump jack is installed and is ready for production.
After several days of pumping, the well comes on oil. This is called the flush period. A typical good well can produce over a thousand barrels in it's first year of production.
Excess natural gas is flared at night. The light can be visible for miles.
The oil is visible in a small section of plastic pipe.
A production manager from Ergon Oil Purchasing places an identification number on the side of a new tank.
When the tank is full an Ergon tanker loads the oil bound for the refinery in West Virginia.
A 3 inch line on the back of the tanker loads 160 barrels of oil in about 20 minutes.
During the loading process the oil is tested to make sure is it free from water or other impurities.
Within weeks of building roads, drilling and completing the well, building the tank battery and producing the well, the site is reclaimed with fresh grass and clover.