[mauvehaus]

As an outsider who has spent a fair amount of time in the area (climbing in the Red River Gorge area, specifically), thanks for shedding some light on the politics and mentality of the area.

Can you shed any light on how the oil industry is viewed, how many people it employs, etc? I've really only ever been down to the area on the weekends, and while a lot of the climbing access is via oil company roads, I've never seen any oil workers or trucks. Is this because the industry doesn't employ many people, or just because they don't work weekends?

Incidental fun fact, the Gallery climbing area has a huge overhang (15-20 meters horizontally, 20-30 vertically) where there's a well casing that goes from the ceiling to the floor for no apparent reason. Presumably there's an oil jack up top, but I'm curious why the well is located there...

Thanks for your informative participation throughout this discussion.

[Animats]

Oil fields used to employ people only during the drilling phase. Once in production, they're mostly unattended. The classic oil field is a spread-out collection of pumpjacks running endlessly with nobody around.

Fracking operations, though, are complicated. There's usually a sizable site from which directional drilling spreads out underground. There's water, sand, and hydrochloric acid going down the holes, and mixed oil, gas, and sludge coming up. Lots of trucking activity.[1]

[1] https://www.fractracker.org/resources/oil-and-gas-101/explor...