Same Old Oil Misinformation, Different Dummy

Parts of a drilling rig

It's been quite a while since our staffers 1) skewered some idiot from HubPages.com and 2) raked some fool over the coals for misinformation about the oil business. Today, we're gonna rectify that long silence: the victim of the day is some character who publishes his "hubs" under the handle tjar12, but a little googling finds he's a guy by the name of Tim Archbold. We have no idea why he thinks he's knowledgeable about "Oil Exploration and Drilling - How is Oil Found?"; but the sad fact is that he isn't...

Like so many others who attempt to explain the black box that "makes our gasoline," Archbold peppers his long and rather convoluted article with bits and pieces of misinformation, erroneous assumptions, and garbled factoids. We decided the easiest way to perform our skewering is to address (some of) the mistakes one by one, so here goes:

• Oil accumulates between layers of the subsurface or in porous rock among other things... "Between" layers? How's that possible? and just what are those "other things" you mention, Tim?
• ...the job is to find the right convergence that would be necessary to form an oil pool... "convergence"? of what?
• Geologist can study aerial photographs and images from satellites to find data that would indicate possible locations to explore... Oh, Timmy, geologists wish all they had to do was study photographs...

Why is oil found in the deserts and arctic areas: Oil and gas result mostly from the rapid burial of dead microorganisms in environments where oxygen is so scarce that they do not decompose... We weren't aware that oxygen is scarce in deserts and arctic areas; but then the assumption that oil is (only) found in deserts and arctic areas sure would surprise people along the US Gulf Coast! It would also surprise people in coastal California, Kansas, Michigan, Poland, Indonesia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Angola, India, France, Scotland, and a couple hundred other non-desert, non-arctic locations.

• A hole called a celler [sic] is dug at the location of the drilling hole. The workers then start drilling the hole most likely with a drill on a truck... A "celler"? WTF? Oh, he meant cellar... and, for what it's worth, drilling commences with the rig that will be used throughout the process; and truck-mounted rigs are more likely to be used for workovers and shallow completions than for "making hole."

Archbold's description of the process of finding oil is simplistic (and only about half-right), and his outline of the drilling process is full of holes -- and not in the good way. We figure that the only recognition he's going to get for this (other than a couple of fawning comments from other Squidoo morons) will be the Dumbass of the Day award we're handing him.

If you're interested, some information about how the oil industry really works can be found in our sister blog, Inside the Patch, and the oilfield services company Schlumberger has put together a very useful resource in their Oilfield Glossary.

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