But to the team of specialists who have been working at the site over the past few weeks their quest to uncover the secrets of the 350 million year old rocks below its surface is the ultimate gamble.
With rocketing oil and gas prices Egdon Resources PLC, the firm behind the £1.6m venture, believe there is a one-in-three chance of them striking it lucky.
They are spending around £15,000 per day to try to discover the size of the gas field and its likely production potential.
Even then there is only a one-in-three chance that it is useable.
For many years it has been suspected there has been natural gas – also known as methane – below Westerdale.
In the 1960s gas was extracted from a site near Ralph's Cross just three-and-a-half kilometres from the present site.
The 24-hour operation began on 19 January and according to the site's drilling supervisor, John Palmer, they hope to evacuate the site by next Friday.
He said: "They say we are going to have to import gas from other countries like Russia because our reserves our low. Whether that happens I don't now.
"If we do find gas here it will be a big find. It's probably going to be the biggest thing that's going to happen here for the next few years."
It's a dangerous task for the 24 employees, which includes a small team of geologists at the £200,000 site built by Ruswarp firm Nobles and safety is of paramount importance.
If there are indications of gas being found, the entire hole will be cased with steel piping cemented in place and the hole will be left full of mud to balance the pressure of any gas find and the top capped off until it's decided whether gas can be extracted from the field.
The drill used to dig the hole is rather like a dentist's drill only much bigger and more costly – drill bits can cost up to £30,000 each.
And its operation is a painstaking process – the hole is being drilled at a 35° angle and will be driven into the earth to a maximum depth of 1,200m.
At the deepest part of the dig, they will encounter carboniferous rock which is estimated to be between 290 and 345 million years old where the gas is most likely to be present.
A small team of geologists or mudloggers constantly analyse the rock samples which are being taken at around every 10 metres depending on how fast they are drilling.
One of their jobs is to measure the quality of the gas found in the rocks.
They are looking for the presence of two minerals in the rocks – dolomite and calcite – the higher the percentage of dolimite the more likely gas is to be found there.
The geologists are collecting around 40 samples each day and once the investigation is complete they will be sent to the British Geological Survey for safe-keeping.
"Once we finish drilling here we will take everything down and move off site and it will be put back to green field land," said Mr Palmer.
"If it looks like its going to produce gas they will return in a couple of weeks before the summer period.
"If we don't find anything it will be left just like we were never here."