I heard this story on NPR today and was curious to see what this unregulated, citizen oil well drillers boom looked like. Good grief, you have to see this picture to believe it.
I'll be looking for the Oil Gleaning Kit in my next Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue.
"You have to go to where the oil is" said one man who also shared he has moved his kit more than 45 times.
From the Guardian in March, 2013. News seems to waft our way slowly
Burma's oil rush: 'Nothing else in this country gives you money like this'
Thousands seize chance to profit from abandoned wells in spirit of enterprise denied under former military regime
At the end of the last dirt road in Thayet, Maung Ko Oo, 25, is standing thigh-deep in a pit of crude oil, his longyi tied up high around his waist, a sweaty vein of black tar streaked across his forehead. His boss – a round-faced man sporting a baseball cap and ruby ring – is standing over him, shouting out orders to the half-dressed men relaying oil-filled buckets to the huge barrels lining their station.
As the early afternoon sun arcs high over these dusty hills in central Burma, the men climb atop the barrels and pour in the oil bucket by bucket, then roll the filled barrels up a ridge and into the back of a truck. All around them, thousands of workers are doing the same – digging for oil, drilling for oil, collecting the oil, and selling it off to local refineries – in unregulated, artisanal pits which they claim can fetch up to 300 barrels of crude oil a day, worth $3,000 (£2,000) at local market prices.
I imagine Oil and Gas Magnates here in the job-killing, regulated, freedom sucking United States must salivate at the FREE MARKET Oil Industry in recently freed from Miliary Rule Burma.
Now that the word is out, I imagine ALEC is writing bills for GOP Governors to pass to allow gun toting, freedom loving 'Mericans to glean U S Oil fields, too, because nothing raises the standard of living like GLEANING