Hard Core

Comment #8

mikeintexas — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 19:32:59 GMT

<br />But no, the days of easily found and produced oil and gas is long past. We still have a good reserve of oil and a huge reserve of natural gas. I do think Saudi Arabia is vastly overstating their own reserves, but also think there are other huge reserves left in the world; the one I've been keeping my eye on is the oil fields just off the coast of Vietnam. I believe that's why China has been so active in the S. China Sea, building islands and military bases on them...I think it's a thin... [ More ]

Comment #7

mikeintexas — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 19:19:05 GMT

<br />H/T for the Beverly Hillbillies reference! The Native Americans used to go to those oil seeps, use the tar to coat their canoes and the oil for various medicines. Forget Hollywood and Rodeo Drive; I've always wanted to go the the Le Brea Tar Pits and Museum there in L.A. Also on my bucket list is the Permian Basin Oil and Gas Museum in Midland, TX. The Panhandle Plains Museum in nearby Canyon, TX has a great petroleum wing w/ exhibits.

Comment #6

mikeintexas — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 19:09:35 GMT

Y/W MADDOG. I prefer posting things like this instead of political stuff; I'll do a few more over the next few weeks, but no promises...it is, after all, National Procrastination Week!

Comment #5

eddessaknight — Sat, 02 Mar 2019 00:26:30 GMT

Great info,Mike, so as long as the earth keeps spinning we will,have a infinite oil supply ?

Comment #4

jarasan — Fri, 01 Mar 2019 19:18:33 GMT

TY! Thank you for sharing, recovering oil is much more than finding a "bubbling crude". Most have no idea what is involved.

Comment #3

jarasan — Fri, 01 Mar 2019 19:18:25 GMT

TY! Thank you for sharing, recovering oil is much more than finding a "bubbling crude". Most have no idea what is involved.

Comment #2

jarasan — Fri, 01 Mar 2019 19:18:17 GMT

TY! Thank you for sharing, recovering oil is much more than finding a "bubbling crude". Most have no idea what is involved.

Comment #1

MADDOG10 — Thu, 28 Feb 2019 14:59:45 GMT

Wow, interesting. Thanks for the information, Mike.

Original Blog Entry: Hard Core

mikeintexas — Wed, 27 Feb 2019 07:01:36 GMT

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)

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