Oil Drilling for Dummy Freelancers

Drake's derrick, reproduced

We often wonder why so many people are completely ignorant about the oil industry. Even among literate, educated adults the science and economics of petroleum exploration and production seem to be mysterious black boxes filled with vast conspiracies. Perhaps it's because gasoline (which, to most, is the same thing as "the oil business") is the only consumer product whose prices are visible from the street. Failure to comprehend how and why those retail prices are set is rampant. Much of that failure may result from the misinformation that shows up around the internet, misinformation along the lines of that published to eHow.com by Frederick S. Blackmon (screenwriter and parkour instructor) in the Sciencing.com post "Facts About Oil Drilling."

Though composed in an interesting narrative style as befits his sometime day job (screenwriter, not parkour), Fred's text is still chock full of factual errors from the small to the large. Let's debunk a few of those:

"[after 1859] oil drilling quickly became a booming industry" -- Not exactly: the chief use for petroleum prior to wide use of the internal combustion engine was kerosene lighting. In the USA, production did not exceed 1,000 barrels per day until sixty years after Drake "Oil wells are used to pump crude petroleum gases and oil from underground sources" – Not exactly: they're used to pump crude oil (not gases) from reservoirs, not sources. "Crude oil is a highly viscous liquid and very dark in color..." – Not necessarily. In fact, the most prized crude is light in color and has low viscosity. "Geologists search for pockets of crude oil in underground reservoirs." -- There's that dumbass "pocket" bullshit again. "Rotary drilling... mud... lubricates the drill bit, reinforces the sides of the drill hole, and helps pull out rock cuttings." -- "Pull out"? Cuttings float out as the mud is pumped through the drill pipe - there's no "pulling" involved. "By drilling at a slant, deviating from the vertical oil wells, drillers could reach a greater amount of the reserve." -- That's not why drillers use directional drilling: they use it to reach several productive zones from a single surface location, among other reasons. Here, Blackmon conflates horizontal drilling with "slant holes."

We thank the internet gods that Blackmon never got the chance to misinform his readership about petroleum production, refining, transportation, or economics; but rest assured that somewhere some other, equally ignorant, Dumbass of the Day has done so.

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