mikeintexas's Blog

From Twitter:

Catturd‏

I was emailing back and forth with a friend and he mentioned a particular oil field where I grew up and it reminded me of this old post in my Blogger blog and I linked him to it. It's several yrs. old and I had forgotten about it.

I took these photos a few months ago to post in a political forum I used to frequent; I wanted to (try to) prove to a guy that hydrocarbons were formed by deposits of organic material. He was arguing that, since some Georgia textbook had said "oil came from dinosaurs" that that was what was taught in our schools and it was wrong. (never mind that the textbook was printed in the 50's, and was a grade school primer. That was about his intellectual level, come to think of it)

He was insisting that oil is formed in the earth's core (abiogenic petroleum origin) and that we were nowhere nearly running out of it and that oil companies kept this "fact" a secret. (and this coming from a guy who said every Ron Paul supporter was a conspiracy nut)

This is a core sample from one of my dad's wells; it came from approx. 4800 feet and is from the Brown Dolomite formation.



The large white deposit in the above photo is chert (sometimes called "flint"); drilling through the dolomite formation is tricky enough*, but these hard layers of chert could tear up a drill bit if not careful.

*Dolomite is very porous, and that's why -- in that particular area -- it is the oil-bearing strata. In other places, where it was necessary to drill deeper to find oil or gas, drilling through this particular formation took special precautions; if the drilling fluid wasn't viscous (thick) enough, or didn't have enough "filler", the formation could swell from the fresh water and "stick your bit" and pipe. It is also a "lost circulation" zone, sometimes sucking in fluid faster than could be pumped down the hole.

This next photo shows just how porous the rock is.



It's so porous, I used to like to pour liquid incense onto the core; it would soak it up and slowly release the fragrance over several weeks time.

This next shot shows some tiny fossils embedded into it. (Some might argue that they're rock, but I took this to my college geology professor and he verified it. He wanted me to give it to him, but he had already stolen a meteorite from me...long story)



No, it wasn't "just" dinosaurs that made oil; my dad used to say it was dinosaur "poop" more than the prehistoric animal remains, but that was...just like that Georgia textbook...a simplification. The organic material that later became oil came from seas that used to cover this area millions of years ago. It wasn't just one time, but several, over millions of years and millions of tons of organics. The tremendous amount of organic material, under tremendous heat and pressure, formed the hydrocarbons.



That's not as nice an example as is this core sample from Norway, but I think it's still interesting.

My dad and I used to polish rocks, and he made an ashtray out of a slab of core sample. I don't know what happened to it, but it had a beautiful shell in it.

That particular field is nearly played out, but the last time I was out there, they were drilling some injection wells and seemed to be having some success with that method. (tertiary recovery)

As always, the Pointman is on point.

When you hear about a coup in another country, it usually happens in a small country in the Caribbean or South America or buried away in the Balkans somewhere. The TV rolls the almost stock footage of old WWII tanks rolling towards the presidential palace and the state-run television or radio stations being taken over by a few platoons of armed soldiers. The single nationwide newspaper will get the same treatment. That’s the usual way of doing it, but for both reasons of culture and sheer scale, it simply wasn’t a viable way to seize control of the American government.

This was a slow coup, initiated by political opponents of Trump and executed by usually faceless individuals who’d nearly all been appointed by the outgoing administration to top positions within both the executive and judicial branches of government. To name a few departments, FBI, DoJ, State, odds and sods of the Fort Meade Maryland and Langley Virginia feral children and no doubt a few people in the judiciary to rubber stamp the coup’s legality. Add in the fake news machine cranked up to full volume, and they were all involved in some way or another.

The failed coup d’etat in America

Was checking the latest uploads from my numerous YouTube channel subscriptions and was thrilled to see a new one from zefrank1 after an absence of a few months.  I swear, the guy must be Morgan Freeman's brother from another mother, he sounds so much like him. 

I love funny stuff like this and while sometimes the videos get a bit silly, I often find myself literally LOL.

Warning:  while his curse words (very few) are bleeped, some of the narration contains sexual innuendo or scatological references...but they're hilarious!  There's also animal nudity. <snicker> All that said, the vids are really quite educational and more entertaining than National Geographic.

National Emergency! Just How Dangerous Is The Border?

Love these!  The latest NFL one was hilarious.

Dem Rep. Replies to Conservative Teen's Tweet on SOTU: 'You're Right to Be Afraid of Us'

Such an intelligent, well- spoken young man.   I hope he's the future of the Republican Party.

Son: "Dad, I'm gay."

Dad: "That's okay, I love you no matter what."

Son: "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has some good ideas."

Dad: "Get the **** out of my house."

Some things simply aren't acceptable.

Right at 11 minutes long, but worth the time to watch and see for yourself just what hypocrites the Hollywood leftists are about walls.

(and everything else, if you think about it)

Can't embed the video, sorry.  Take a look. (on Twitter) You'll either laugh or cry, but you also might throw up a little in your mouth.

Warning:  Strong Language/Profanity

"The most pro-Trump town in America" with Trump getting 95% of the vote.

‘We needed Trump to survive’ – in this area of Texas, Trump is deemed a success

For the last three decades or so, there’s been a phony war going on. Whichever democracy you happen to live in, you’re involved, but your role in it is purely confined to being a football kicked around between the two sides. The two sides in question doing the kicking are the two political parties which broadly style themselves as right or left of some notional line through the no-mans-land middle ground between them.

As I often remind people, and illustrated by the above graphic, "Republican" and "Conservative" are far too often not one and the same.

As usual, the Pointman is on point.  Read more at:

The Misrepresentation of the People Act.