Cary Neeper--Writings© 2002-2013 Carolyn A. Neeper

The Oil Patch Project takes place at the tense intersection of the oil, cattle and environmental cultures in present-day New Mexico. Geological engineer JIM CHECKERS, an ungainly fellow with likeable eccentricities, finds himself alone in hearings opposing the routine dumping of oilfield wastes. Undaunted, he faces the hostility of local and multinational oil companies. While gathering data in the field, Checkers and his attractive lab tech watch as the body of a friendly oilfield inspector emerges in a drilling pit. That same day an employee of ENREXX Energy and Minerals International disappears. While Checkers' efforts are sabotaged by processes and politics that spill into his work at a national laboratory, he and his unlikely team--the lab tech, an ambitious state policeman, a disaffected intelligence analyst, and Checker's politically connected wife--investigate the murder and the disappearance but discover that the mystery resides in Enrexx itself. Flying and caving adventures suggest that something strange is going on in that small oil company. Together the team endangers their careers and their lives in pursuing what they suspect but cannot prove.

Although the characters are fictitious, the story reflects real events in which laboratory scientists, state government, petroleum lawyers, and Washington bureaucrats unwittingly connect in a remote patch of New Mexico sage brush.