The Clueless Homeschooler's Take on Oil

If there's any industry we can talk about with at least some authority, it's the oil industry - that's where our staff geologist worked for thirty-five years. So we picked eHow.com contributor Naima Manal for today's dumbass because, in spite of her obvious lack of familiarity with the petroleum industry, she "informed" an unknown number of readers through her article "What is the Definition of Oil Drilling?"¹ There seems to be a theme here, because Naima isn't the only dummy who doesn't let ignorance stop her from writing about the oil industry...

Ms Manal's errors are too numerous to list and correcting them all would get boring. We'll just cherry-pick a few of the more idiotic:

Pumpjack

• "In the absence of oxygen between the earth's layers"  "Between" the layers? What - you're saying that there are gaps between rock layers? No friggin' way, Naima!
• "Oil companies expect geologists to find ideal locations for oil traps, which must meet their standards for source rock, reservoir rock, as well as entrapment." Besides non-parallel construction, you forgot to mention "seal."
• "Shock waves are sent through the earth by a thumper truck, explosives, or a compressed-air gun and send back readings of oil content beneath the surface..." The usual misinformation about seismic exploration: it does NOT provide "readings of oil content"!

"The second step is to drill a starter hole, which reaches the area just above the oil location..." WTF is a "starter hole," and does this dumbass realize that any "starter hole" would have to be thousands of feet deep? "Once they reach the level just above the oil store, a mold is made out of cement to create a well. This will hold the walls in place and prevent oil mixing with rock debris." WTF is this mold business? How do you make a "mold" of something 15,000 feet long and a foot in diameter? Dumbass! "The next step is to prepare for the oil extraction, which can be an explosive occurrence. To prevent a blowout, the well is cracked. Then the oil flows into the casing. Holes are made into the casing for tubes to be inserted to extract the oil." Wow, what a complete and total mass of bull. It makes our heads hurt just to read it.

There's plenty more, but that should give you a sense of why Naima Manal is the Dumbass of the Day today. What is worse, however, is that this woman not only shared her misinformation with the world, she homeschooled her children. We can only hope that she was better-prepared for other topics, otherwise her kiddos are probably dummies, too.

¹ In a weird coincidence, the nice people at Leaf Group deleted Naima's post (it can still be found using the Wayback machine -- URL   www.ehow.com/about_4674699_what-definition-oil-drilling.html  ), but they replaced it with another scientifically illiterate article about drilling..

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