Steve Pearce: “It is. And people a lot of times unfamiliar with it will say, well, does that not contaminate the water? Well, in…”

“It is. And people a lot of times unfamiliar with it will say, well, does that not contaminate the water? Well, in southeast New Mexico, where I live, we get our water from the Ogallala aquifer that lies underneath five different States. The process has a way of running pipe through those zones with water so that we never do get drilling fluids out into the water. We do not get the fresh water back into the well. We usually have three concentric series of pipes at the surface down to about 800 feet. We have very large, sometimes 13\1/2\ or 13\1/8\, that size of casing, that will go down to about 800 feet, then another string maybe down to 1,500 or 2,000 feet. And, finally, we have the 6- inch string the gentleman is talking about that runs on to the total depth of the well. We then go in and put cement outside of that pipe. The particular company that I owned really was charged with going in and repairing those strings of pipe as holes got in them or as problems came along. The science in the industry has come a long ways in the many years since my father was in the business, and I can remember growing up when there were environmental problems. {time} 2230 But I will tell you, most of the young people working in those companies now are as environmentally sensitive as anyone you know. They take care because none of us want to contaminate the water for our children, and we do not want to contaminate the surface of the soil for our children.…”