defeating small oil

Over the past few months Henderson Settlement has been in talks with a local oil company about the possibility of drilling oil on part of the 1600 acres here at the settlement. They were prepared to give a donation of $10,000 up front and a percentage (12.5) of profits, which would go to GBGM as they are the land owners and could choose to give us all or some or none. They would essentially build a road to the site of drilling and have tanks on site that a tractor trailer would come to daily...weekly depending on how much of a gusher it was.

Mike Tupper who is on the board took it upon himself to investigate the location itself, where an access road would have to go and spoke to other gas and oil companies about their operations and how this work progressed. He and I spoke many times about the benefits and drawbacks of this. As a self admitted tree hugger I was worried about contamination and what happens after the oil is gone or not worth drilling anymore. There were also questions of how much oil this would produce and its a gamble even according to the oil man.

In the end the board voted to not accept their offer after not much debate and a good argument put forward by Mike. So here is to defeating small oil and not taking 10 grand that we could really use at the expense of our land and community.