 By Alvin Engelke
alvinengelke@hotmail.com
Rev. Keith Belt was off getting some book larnin [course of study] on the former Lucy Goff farm on Spring Creek so Pauline Brumfield brought the message in song after Gay Park did a reading.
Barb Sampson who had been living in the Land of the Midnight Sun was visiting Damon Sampson for a few days. She now resides in Morganton, North Carolina.
The Creston homecoming will be Sunday, August 24 in the afternoon at the Creston Community Building. Folks are urged to bring their pictures, mementos and memories to share with others who come for the occasion. It also should be noted that there will be no auction at Creston on September 6 because of sickness in the Starcher family but the Dobbins auction will be held September 19th.
There were 13 members present on August 9 for the Adopt-a-Highway meeting and on August 11 membership cards were distributed. The organization is having a quilt raffle, the quilt & 2 shams were made by Bessie Arthur. Tickets are $1 each or 6 for $5.
School started in Calhoun County and the bus driver was late on the very first day. As one parent who was late for work as a result noted, "Not off to a good start".
Local residents are reminded that farm use reports are due by the end of the month. If not turned in farmland is reclassified as suitable for condominiums, strip malls and other high tax stuff likely even if it is in the so called "flood plain".
The tank bill that the legislators were 'forced' to pass when they were last down at the Mouth of the Elk now has many concerned. The members were not allowed to read the bill which apparently was hatched by Sen. Unger the gentleman who lived in mommy's basement while being a lobbyist to lobby another company owned by a politician who was on the national scene. Unger claims to have "worked at the feet of Mother Theresa." Since she is now gone his claims cannot be verified. The bill, in addition to causing places like DuPont to move out of the state, is the death knell for small oil and gas producers who cannot pay $2,000 -$3,000/year for the testing of oil tanks on dozens of wells that make small amounts of oil. One employee of a big outfit said that the intent was to get rid of the small producers. Unger, of course, lives in a rarified environment where he would not know anyone who worked in the oil & gas fields or maybe anywhere else.
An airplane leased to a Texas outfit has been doing geomagnetic mapping of the area. Currently the plane is based at the Wood County airport. Also it was learned that some of the new hotels that are being built in Parkersburg are booked for from 3 to 5 years because of the impending oil drilling boom.
Cabot Oil & Gas must have assumed that Wirt folks knew nothing about the drilling frenzy and offered one owner $100/acre and a 1/8 net [that is after expenses] lease and "figgering" that folks in Wood County might be a bit more savvy offered them $500/acre and 15 1/2% net. The local acreage has already been determined to be better than acreage in Texas that fetched $15,000/acre bonuses and 25% royalty which is the amount one must pay to have wells on Cabot's oil and gas property.
Cabot has moved Sidewinder's Rig #64 on their location on Larkmead Road but they make it very clear that no one is welcome on the site. Should be good place to check out how good the pictures the camera takes that is on the drone. A late report indicated that the well has already been drilled in at 8,000 feet and testing equipment has been brought on location.
Nisource has announced that will all the drilling as natural gas production they are planning a new big pipeline to move 1.5 billion cubic feet/day of natural gas. Many feet that the gas will go to LNG facilities and that the gas will be sold to western Europe to end their dependence on George Soros and the natural gas from Russia which is planning to conquer all in its path. Aubrey McClendon's American Energy Partners [AEP], Noble and Range Resources will be among those using the line. Range recently did some title updates on their acreage in Clay County. The pipeline will cost $1.75 billion. At the same time Dominion [Mother Hope] wants to run a 42" gas line from W. Va. to North Carolina to transport natural gas.
Magnum Hunter which owns the former Triad leases announced that their subsidiary Green Hunter Water plans barge dock at Portland Ohio [down below Ravenswood] that would handle frac sand, brine, frac flowback, etc. Heather Cantino who is opposed to the proposal said frac materials are highly explosive and flammable although the techniques for both the Marcellus & Utica use 99% slickwater [water and detergent] and sand.
Otis Campbell has started up motorcycle rides again at "The Farm", the Campbell family property situate on Little Creek in western Calhoun County near Creston. The Parkersburg News did a nice article but the writer was geographically challenged placing the property on "Lost Run in western Wirt County". Lost Run is on Spring Creek downstream from Beaver Dam.
Joe O'Ferrell who did live down on Leafy Glen Court obtained a permit to rework a Big Injun well in Burning Springs District while Junior Hildreth obtained permits to drill two new Berea wells in/near the Richardsonville oil field.
Janita C. Stewart, age 85 passed away in Parkersburg on July 24. She was the widow of Herbert S. Stewart.
A memorial service for Robert Juart was held August 17 at the Creston Community Building. The son of Wanda Grim Juart Tucker and the late William Juart, he was only 57 when cancer got the best of him.
A week or so ago the katydids started their "singing". Historically that meant six weeks until frost. Except for the "global warming " folks it has generally been conceded that this has been one of the coolest summers in some time. Some folks have been putting up some fine second cutting hay.
The post office department has been closing rural post offices willy nilly for some time and cutting back hours at others "to save money" and they also talked about ending delivery of mail on Saturday. Thus some local folks were shocked to see the tee vee ads touting the fact that the "postal service" was increasing their Sunday delivery services. Truth is stranger than fiction.
The price of local Pennsylvania grade crude oil is $96.35 with mountain high test (drip) fetching $74.85, Marcellus and Utica light $90.35 and medium $96.35/bbl. A certain fellow who is an elected official in another county received a check for Marcellus production on his property and he noticed that he was not paid for the gas liquids. A terse response from the company's home office was, "we don't pay for that; it wasn't in the lease, now shut up".
The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Hur Herald. | 
