lifestyle | the gommelier
Oil Makes the
World Go Round
Keith Hoffman blows the lid on how watching your mud pressure, exploding cracks
and the dangers of over sucking all influence the world’s most valuable commodity.
J
ohnny Myers has a big ol’ belt buckle
with an embossed state of Texas
emblazoned across it. His boots are sun
faded, dusty and eager for more. Jeans are
stiff and coloured that deep, dark, blue that
only cowboys seem to covet. With a white
hat and pure Texas drawl, Johnny stands
before me in the furnace that is West Texas
oil country in the middle of summer. He
informs me and budding oil magnate Zach
Roberts that the vast oil field below us goes
from ‘plum over yonder to plum over here’. As I
take in the ramifications of ‘plum’ as a general
geographic descriptor, I blink some sweat from
my eyes. I pause and honestly wonder if this
is not all some elaborate ploy with Myers as
a brilliantly casted Hollywood actor. Then he
begins to tell me about oil. Actor he is not;
he’s an oilman and Texan through and through.
70 GAMBLINGONLINEMAG.CO.UK
Myers is an honoured and highly sought
after ‘pumper’ in these parts. Myers is the guy
you want on the spot you’ve decided to drill. He
serves as a brilliant conductor in the shockingly
complicated orchestra that defines the act of
extracting black gold from deep in the earth
and into your Range Rover.
When one stands on the modern-day, sun-
baked dirt that defines West Texas, it’s hard to
imagine that a vast ocean once covered this land.
The sizeable armies of plankton and simple plants
that thrived in that nutrient-rich sea died long ago.
The energy stored in the complex chemical
bonds that comprised their little bodies,
however, did not.
Those energetic bonds were slowly
reformed into what we call today West Texas
Intermediate Crude by eons of time and the
passionate crushing and heating that resulted È Extracting black gold is fraught with danger.

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È This map shows the 10 most densely-filled oil regions. Scientists are yet to agree on how the planet came to have such a rich natural resource.
from being sucked down into the warm
magmatic embrace of Mother Earth. Yes,
that soup of algae, assorted plants, spores
and insects that would’ve made you think twice
about putting on your lime Speedos and taking
a dip in that historic sea-turned-to-oil. Similar
processes have occurred all over the world, and
are responsible for most of the world’s oil—from
scorching Saudi Arabia to the frozen tundra
of Russia, to the coastlines of California.
Because of its low density, oil will naturally
rise upward through the earth’s crust to seek the
surface. (Picture an oil film sitting on a vinegary
layer in a salad dressing container). Modern-
day oil exploration is centred around finding
petroleum deposits whose natural upward
migration has been impeded by rock formations,
know your... abiotic theory
An alternative idea put forth to explain the
immense stores of oil beneath our feet is
termed the ‘abiotic’ theory. If you remember
my article on diamonds [June 2008], we
discussed the differences between a lump
of coal, graphite and the brilliant diamond.
All are made from the same simple carbon-
thus forming underground pools or reservoirs.
Typical steps for finding and extracting oil
can include:
• Creating a series of small explosions along
the earth’s surface in an area thought to harbour
underground oil.
• Collecting and analysing the sound reflections
coming back from objects buried in the earth’s
crust as sound waves will differentially bounce
back to surface detectors because their speeds
are changed by encounters with rocks, water,
dirt, oil, etc. If the sound analysis is positive, and
a pool of oil seems to reside below, checking
for things like water table depths is done
to determine if drilling is even possible.
• ‘Air drilling’ (when applicable) to below the
aquifer or water-table depth (so as not to fill
to-carbon chemical bonds. The dramatically
different end products are produced by
different bonding angles between individual
carbon atoms, with the most rigid and
symmetrical bonds found in diamonds. That
stiffness was created only by the addition of
massive heat and pressure from deep in the
earth. The logic behind the abiotic concept
of oil production parallels such carbon bond
particulars. Abiotic proponents argue that
the mammoth oil fields beneath places like
Saudi Arabia, Alaska and Iraq are far too
large to solely be produced by the crushing
and heating of old plant and insect carcasses.
The world consumes 85 million barrels of
oil every day, and contrary to some assertions,
the supply has no end in sight. Seems that
an almost incalculably aged supply of dead
plankton would have had to undergo just
the right earth-shifting tectonic burial dance
the gommelier | lifestyle
up the world’s fresh water supply with
‘drilling mud’ (more on that in a second).
• Attaching a toothy drill bit to a 10-metre
piece of hollow metal pipe, and then applying
massive rotational forces to the bit while
jamming high pressure ‘mud’ (a mixture of
dirt and water with added natural, and heavy,
components, which result in a high-density
slurry) down into the pipe as you begin to
tear a small hole into the earth.
• ‘Reading your mud’ after it comes to the
surface filled with chunks the drill bit rages
through for signs of oil. Then another 10
metres of pipe is added over and over again,
300 to even 500 times.
• Punctuating this toil with seemingly endless
skirmishes with broken drill heads, mud
in order to be submerged to just the right
depths for transformation of plankton to
petroleum carbon-carbon bonds. The abiogenic
explanation for much of the world’s oil is that
when the earth formed, deep in her mantle,
gigantic amounts of hydrogen and carbon
were coaxed into forming oil by the massive
heat and pressures found there, akin to how
diamonds are formed from simple carbon
sources. That ancient oil continues to rise up
into the earth’s crust and thereby forms our
colossal modern-day reservoirs of petroleum.
Many geologists disagree, and cite the relative
amounts of certain carbon isotopes as evidence
that almost all oil must have come from old
plant and animal matter, and not from the
earth’s ancient mantle. The controversy
continues, and I imagine both sides will one
day agree that our black gold comes from
varied processes.
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 lifestyle | the gommelier
È Despite its ‘get rich quick’ reputation, drilling for oil requires sophiticated levels of expertise.
pressure losses and fixes, potential ‘blow outs’
from rapidly escaping natural gas pockets,
‘tripping’ of pipe (taking it all back out of the
hole every time a drill bit needs replacement),
and the constant danger of lost limbs and
spontaneous fires until you reach two- to
three-thousand metres into the crust.
• Stopping the drilling at a depth that your
gismos predicted oil to reside.
• Calling in specialists to drop sophisticated
equipment down to the bottom of the hole to
determine if petroleum is there in sufficient
quantities to continue the process via the use
can I take your order?
72 GAMBLINGONLINEMAG.CO.UK
of an ‘electric’ or even ‘gamma-ray’ loggers.
• Inserting permanent ‘casing pipe’.
• Forcing high-pressure cement down via a
heavy saltwater flush to replace the mud and
then harden to ensure the hole remains strong
enough to withstand the oil sucking process.
• Dropping down explosive charges into your
perfectly good casing pipe, at ‘pay depth’, in
order to blow holes through the casing pipe,
surrounding cement, and into the surrounding
rock in order to trigger, hopefully, perforations
where the oil will collect and then flow up into
your pipe.
Oil comes in many different grades, or
forms, from ‘heavy’ used to generally
make items like asphalt for roads, to
‘bunker’ oil for fuel used in ships, to the
‘light’ West Texas crude. Another term you
commonly see is whether the oil is ‘sweet’
or ‘sour’, which is just a measure of how
much stinky sulphur is found in the given
petroleum source. West Texas oil has some
of the lowest levels of sulphur, and hence
is the ‘sweetest’, and therefore among
the most expensive, to be found. Next
time you hear someone getting churlish
about the high price of oil, think about
the information above, and also realise
that oil, even at 60 quid a barrel, pales in
comparison to how much you’d pay for a
barrel of bottled water, milk or Starbuck’s
fluffy-neato half-caf at 63, 105, and 670
quid a barrel, respectively.
È In the black: Azerbaijan spa treatment.
È Hoffman: hirsute homage to There Will Be Blood.
• Collecting the petroleum that, via internal
pressure from the reservoir below, streams
up the pipe (a period of days to years).
• Installing pumps to extract the petroleum
once those internal pressures subside to a
point where free-flowing oil ceases.
• Being careful not to over-suck as one can
accidentally drive underlying layers of the less
dense (watery) fractions up through the floating
oil tier and on into your pipe, thus killing the well.
• Transporting the raw crude oil to a ‘heater
treater’ tower, akin to how your favorite alcoholic
spirit is made, which will distill the mix into
varying fractions from heavy stuff (asphalt) to
the lighter density materials (gasoline).
• Bringing your weary, adrenaline-depleted,
body to the boss to collect your modest
pay. Simple? Not by a long shot. Dangerous,
demanding, expensive and extremely risky?
Absolutely.
È Hoffman studies pipe while Roberts eyes a gusher.