by Kooka » Mon 10 Oct 2005, 22:40:07
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('fossilnut2', ' ')I blame the Beverly Hillbillies. "Uncle Jed 'shooting at some food and up from the ground came a bubbling crude".
Folks think he somehow punctured a membrane or liner and then it's just a matter of getting out the buckets and scooping out the oil
Since I know absolutely nothing about the specifics of drilling oil, is the article excerpt below actually too simplified?
Drilling Paradise DRY?
Science World, Oct 1, 2001 by Karen De Seve
Q What is oil and where does it come from?
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"An oil field isn't a huge cavern," Houseknecht says. Rather, oil droplets seep into pores or surface holes in rocks generally filled with water. Since oil is lighter than water, it floats upward and sometimes seeps up through Earth's surface. But nonporous rock layers also trap rising oil,
creating an underground oil reservoir.
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Archaeologists think the Persians used oil they discovered gurgling above ground as glue and building mortar 6,000 years ago. In the 13th century, Venetian explorer Marco Polo reported seeing geysers spewing oil--traded by merchants and used for burning lamps--on his travels through the Middle East.
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Q How do you find oil?
Usually prospectors locate oil by testing porous rocks a foot or two beneath the soil or along rock outcroppings: If the rocks contain a lot of carbon, oil is likely to be nearby but deep underground. Today, geologists use supercomputers and seismic mapping, or sound waves that reflect differently off porous and nonporous rock layers, to create maps of underground oil pockets...