Profitable Oil Drilling for Business Dummies

Bet these guys know more about drilling than Ashbee!

If we had an experimental physicist on staff here at the Antisocial Network there might be a few posts here making fun of J-school grads and people with English lit degrees trying to explain charmed quarks and the significance of the Higgs boson. We don't have one, but we do have a petroleum geologist. That's why we regularly take idiots to task for misinformation about geology, maps, and the oil  business; people like Ashbee A. Bakht, who posted "Profitable Oil Drilling Simplified" at another paragon of factuality, EzineArticles.com.

Bahkt, who claims to hold degrees in psychology and "minerals and mining," appears to work in commodities trading. That's fine; but we suspect he'd be unimpressed by a mere scientist who attempted to write "Commodities Trading Simplified," just as our staffer was unimpressed by Ashbee's ignorance of the oil business. He says he's getting tired of uninformed amateurs who attempt to describe petroleum generation in such ignorant phrasing as,

"Movements within the Earth begin to trap this oil and natural gas between the reservoir rock layers." Bakht then goes on to describe the "movements within the Earth" as "Folding... Faulting... Pinching Out." Disregarding for now the fact that pinchouts are not a result of "movements within the Earth," one of the most basic facts of petroleum exploration is that the traps resulting from said movements are created before hydrocarbons, which enter them after the fact. A second basic fact of petroleum geology is that oil and gas aren't trapped "between the reservoir rock layers," oil and gas are trapped in tiny pore spaces within the reservoir rock. Idiot. More stupid stuff from Bakht:

• "The objective of the geologists is to look for regions that present the perfect conditions to trap oil, for example an entrapment in reservoir rock.":  Please excuse us if we say that sounds 1) circular and 2) stupid. Dumbass.
• "Geologists can measure the minute changes in the Earth's gravitational field which could indicate the flow of oil.":  Uhhh, no they can't. Idiot.
• "Another method to locate oil and gas is by the use of 3D and 4D seismic...":  Just in case you wondered, Ashbee, 4D seismic means the same 3D seismic survey run at different times. Moron.
• "Reserve pits are dug to dispose of rock shavings and the mud excavated during the drilling process.":  Uhh, no, the mud pits are storage for the drilling mud used during drilling, not "excavated." Fool.

Bakht claims to be an "international best-selling author," but many of his handful of self-published works (mostly 10-page pamphlets) receive almost universal scorn from reviewers at Amazon. Our geologist thought a moment and then opined, "If all his writing is as uninformed as this, it's unlikely that our Dumbass of the Day is making his nut." In other words, "best-selling," he ain't.

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