A thought struck me this evening that I want to share with you. This is long, so feel free to skip the read...very little about the TMS is in here. Sunday, our pastor shared the Great Commission (Matthew 28: 16-20) and what our purposes as a Christian was...to glorify God and share our knowledge of Gods love for us to others. Im not trying to preach a sermon here, though Ill be happy to talk with you via private message about Christ. Instead, the sermon got me to thinking about how interesting it is that I have been thrown into the position of trying to keep up with the ongoing fun here in the TMS and passing it along to folks. Why me? I dont know, but Im going to share a little bit of my story with you here since I get the question occasionally from folks both on here and folks who only have met me as a result of my TMS ramblings. First of all, my name is Bernell McGehee. There is another administrator here who occasionally posts, Tommy Rushing, but he leaves 99% of the posts and responses up to me. It was his idea early on to reserve the name. He mainly keeps up our sister site: TMShorizons (blue button on the left side). And, he does an excellent job with that site. I am an accountant with a private practice in Liberty. Other than knowledge required in my practice for income tax purposes, I have no specialized oil field knowledge or experience. That said, Ive pretty much lived my life here in Amite County and Southwest Mississippi, though Ive spent a good amount of time working in the Florida Parishes, and my maternal grandparents (Troy and Winnie McKey) lived on the Macedonia Road north of Centreville, where my mother was raised. Over the years I have worked for every municipality in Southwest Mississippi...yes, even Crosby. When I was young my father hauled oil from sites in Southwest Mississippi and advanced to training and later supervising oilfield truck drivers. Hes provided a fair amount of practical and historical knowledge of the oilfields of the area to help me understand things. As a kid I witnessed a much smaller oilfield boom in the late 1950s and early 1960s from the viewpoint of my paternal grandparents mobile home park in Liberty and more or less in my familys front yard. I watched as my grandfather set up the park (dug a well and ran water lines, among other things) and watched it fill to overflowing. People were seemingly everywhere. The oilfield boom of that time brought a lot of good folks to our area, including my first grade school teacher. I have positive memories of that oilfield boom. Still, nothing about my background truly prepared me for writing about it...so, let me continue... In the spring of 2011 I got a call from Rhett Anderson. He and my family had worked out a trade of land several years before and we both ended up owning minerals/royalties in Sections 17 and 18 of T1N, R5E where the EnCana Anderson 17H and Anderson 18H units are located. Rhett knew that whether anyone else was interested or not in his news, I certainly would be. The nearby Board of Education well (Section 16) had been drilled by Encore on land adjacent to where my paternal grandmother was raised and her family had farmed it under a 16th Section lease while she was growing up. My father and I had walked from the family graveyard on Section 15 over far enough to see the site. Where the road to the Board of Education well site enters Wall Street Road is directly across that road from what is now my land. I watched as water lines were laid along the ditch of the road in front of my property in the spring of 2011 to fracture the BOE well. And, when the Anderson wells were being fractured in 2012, microseismic lines were run across my property. So, early on, before most folks in Southwest Mississippi had heard the term hydraulic fracturing, I had several reasons to be interested. Four wells have been drilled on family holdings plus the Board of Education well with its sentimental interest. Following Rhetts call in 2011, I began to read about the subject...a lot. I also contacted the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality and expressed concerns about hydraulic fracturing and water sources and water disposal. I contacted a client/friend/relative who is a petroleum engineer who oversees drilling/fracking/completing wells in the Haynesville Shale and Permian Basin in Texas. I bent his ear nearly off and got invited to a new employee orientation program at his company to try to help me understand things even more. I became satisfied that hydraulic fracturing was okay...I learned things. Then, I continued to educate myself on the subject. I spent time on many excellent sites and talked with a LOT of folks...one attribute I have is I dont mind asking questions. It became known locally that I had developed a strong interest in the TMS. So, the McComb Enterprise-Journal would occasionally call me and ask me questions as they introduced the area to the subject. No one on staff had the time or interest in keeping up with the TMS, though, so in February of 2013, I was asked to write a column on the subject. I explained to them that I possessed no knowledge outside of what I had learned as a layman over the previous 18-20 months. They said, that was okay, because my ignorance was an asset...I could simplify and relate the subject to the average reader better if I wasnt an expert. I laughed and told them that if they were looking for someone who was ignorant on the subject, then I was their man! A few months later, Tommy Rushing, the founder of this page, asked me to start posting on here and I have thoroughly enjoyed the adventure. My weakness is, Im still very ignorant of the TMS. My strength is, Im still very ignorant of the TMS. I can relate to the questions that are asked on here by so many folks just now learning about the TMS. My goal here has been to try to make this a page where folks felt comfortable learning about a fairly complicated process with life changing potential for the area. I hope weve been successful. So, thats my story and I hope Facebook allows me to share it with you...as long as this post is, they may not. Fire away with questions. This is your opportunity to ask me anything. Then, its back to our regularly scheduled programming. P. S. I am also a part owner in a restaurant in Liberty, Wards, and since the TMS first came on my radar Ive been working with my partners to determine when and if we were going to expand. Were breaking ground to double our dining area tomorrow.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 01:31:11 +0000
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