Thank you all for your replies.I had read about the gas lights in Heathfield, probably in one of those local advertising magazines that drops through the door periodically, but I did not connect them to the wells bored in Heathfield that I saw on the map when I was doing a bit of research earlier this year. Most of the wells in Heathfield were bored between 1895 and 1902 with BP returning in 1955 for another go. The gas must have come as a bit of a surprise to them as they were looking for water! There were a lot of wells drilled around here by BP in the mid 1950’s, the two near me were two of them. Having been in construction for over 40 years I was used to reading bore hole logs, but not down to 5400ft as these two were! Conoco seem to have bored some more in the mid 80’s.India Four Two you are absolutely right to correct my statement with “So they think they know what's down there and they have guessed at how much it will produce”. There is no indication in the reports as to the potential quantity of gas or oil down there, just that it is there. The two near me, Ashdown 1 near the Army camp and Ashdown 2 on the golf course produced up to 20,000 cu ft of gas per day and 150 gallons of oil per day during the course of drilling, but there is no indication as to how long it would have lasted.