WTHR |Indiana man drills for backyard oil
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Greg Losh checks his oil drill.
Chris Proffitt/Eyewitness News
Selma - An Indiana man is capitalizing on high oil prices with his own oil well - in his yard.
Greg Losh began drilling on his ten acre property for natural gas to heat his home and found it. Then he found more.
"Let's see if we can drill for oil. If there's gas here, there's got to be oil here," Losh said. "So, we drilled 300 feet deeper to see if we hit oil."
A camera shows where Losh and his fellow investors found oil, almost 1,300 feet below the surface. While he won't say how many barrels his well pumps each day, the $100,000 start-up cost will pay for itself in one year. The oil is pumped twice a day for 30 minutes into a tank, then it's sold.
Losh says his group of investors will drill four more wells nearby, confident that one of the nation's biggest oil fields in the late 1800's still has plenty of black gold. While he concedes that he's making money, Losh says there's another incentive for drilling at home.
"It's mainly that we don't have to depend on foreign oil. There's oil here, let's see if we can get it again," he said. "It's time to get our homegrown oil back to Indiana."
Losh adds that his goal will be to fill 100 barrels a day.
