Oil Wells for Dummies, Redux - The Freelance Files MMCCVIII

Production Tree

A few of our staffers were listening to a talking head on the radio recently and heard someone claim that "Everyone understands the oil business" (or words to that effect). As Thin Lizzy once said, "man, we fell about the place"! Damned near no one understands the oil business – especially radio talking heads. We've had more than a few laughs (and more groans) at some of the bogosity published by freelancers around the web pretending to explain hydrocarbons and their exploration, but few people have been as... amusing as Kevin Beck, cleanup team member for Sciencing.com, and his attempt to tell the world, "How does an Oil Well Work?"

KeMiBe, as Beck sometimes calls himself, took on the task of rewriting a crapalicious post originally published under the pen name "Edwin Thomas" (sometimes known as "Richard Thomas"). While Kevin expanded Eddy's work by about a factor of four, adding in homespun humor and flowery prose, it's pretty apparent that the erstwhile physics student knew next to nothing about the industry that he couldn't cull from Encyclopedia Britannica for Tweens. Much of what he said was correct, in the way that anodyne crap is usually correct, but he did manage to insert some real stinkers... like these:

"...anyone who has ever seen an oil well, even from a distance, can't help but appreciate the sheer engineering triumph involved in pumping something out of the ground that is not only deep within rock, but in rock below the ocean floor itself..."

First, Kevin, no one's ever seen an oil well: it's a veeeeery deep hole in the ground. Second, not all wells are found "below the ocean floor": it's a safe bet that you can find an oil well within a few miles of your Front Range base of operations.

"...[Oil] refers to the stuff that is found in significant concentrations in the Middle East, off the coast of Venezuela, North America and a few other regions."

In a "a few other regions"? Oil is found on every continent (including Antarctica) and in hundreds of countries. That ain't no "few"!

"...how do petrochemical engineers determine whether a located store of oil is worth the expense of withdrawing it from the ground..."

Petrochemical engineers work in refineries. They are not involved in for the exploration for or production of crude oil – those are petroleum engineers. Sheesh.

"For the most part, [oil] needs to be removed from the interior of actual rocks, albeit large ones..."

Wait, so there are city-sized underground boulders that contain oil? Who knew!

"This allows human oil-seekers to find a trail to the main source located deeper within the Earth..."

Do not use the word "source" in this context, Kevin, unless you know what it means!

"This 'production tree' looks a little like a horse from the side, and has components with names to match."

No, Kevin, a pumpjack looks a little like a horse. A production tree looks like... well, it looks a little like a tree (see the image above). And finally, there's this load of hooey about drills:

"The type of auger (the actual drill part of a drilling tool) used depends on local conditions underground, to the extent these are known or can be predicted. If a sample from a given area is high in ground water, for example, a hollow auger is likely to be chosen."

We couldn't even begin to parse that bull. All we can say is that a) a drill doesn't look like an auger and b) you'd have to look a long time to find a well being drilled with a drillstring that isn't hollow!

It's clear that Beck, whose LinkedIn profile says he's a "science writer," is utterly ignorant of almost every aspect of oil genesis, exploration, and production. Too bad they didn't have one of their in-house "experts" (with degrees in molecular biology or biology and chemistry) review the rewrite. Oh, wait: it still would have won a Dumbass of the Day award, hands down!

SI - OIL