“This oil well, the Houlihan 1-28H, was put in six hundred eighty feet from our house and the noises from that have been bad for the health of myself and my mother. I believe my mother died as a result of the stress from these terrific noises made by that oil well and those noises only stopped briefly in 2015 during the last five years. Only very recently have the noises begun to subside and I think it is thanks to Powder River’s presence. Time will tell if the noises keep on going.
She was old. She was homebound, so she couldn’t leave. Those noises, day and night, when they were fracking it in the beginning, in 2012 and 2013, she couldn’t take it.
I called Officer Thomas of the Sheriff’s Department. He’s the only one I could think of to call. He came out. He heard the noises. He called Kaiser-Francis Oil. He called them repeatedly, and they told him ‘it’s a new well, these noises will stop’ and that was the end of it. Only the noises have not stopped, and this is not a new well, and there’s something wrong here, but these oil people refuse to fix it.”
“There’s the flaring. The other wells, less than half a mile away, there’s been flaring of them since the first oil well was drilled. You can find the completion date of that in the record. That’s not legal to have that flaring going on all the time. Then, when this Houlihan well was drilled in 2012, the fracking involved using a horrible, mysterious white powder, which covered our drivewayand our yard and got into our house.
I called the Wyoming State Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. Jeff Gilliam, of that commission, came and he said, “I’ll investigate the powder.” He came back and said, “That’s just dust. That’s nothing.” And he left.
This [oil development] has been going on about 30 years, but it wasn’t the same as this. Those oil people were not drilling close to people’s houses.
The oil wells were different. They did not make those horrible noises. That’s some kind of fracking. It’s not the regular oil pumping. If you can see, if they just pump they just pump the oil well regularly, it’s just an oil well. But this, at night and in the early morning, is like a fracking. That’s supposed to stop after a couple of weeks, not five years.
It’s like an explosion into the night. Vibrations cause noises and the vibrations from this, if you could come and step out of your car, you’d feel it in the ground. That’s how bad this is.
There’s a ball shape that the oil company scooped out to make that site. It’s just is like a theater that makes the noises come straight over here and it goes right into our houses. What that does to a person’s heart to hear those noises, and I figured that happened several thousand times over the last five years.
I don’t see why I’m still alive, but I must be really strong or something. Those noises are just outrageous.”
-Laurel Paul
Cheyenne, WY
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