They say the leaking oil is “SWEET LIGHT CRUDE” AND IS LESS DANGEROUS TO MARINE LIFE.
Our first and second oil wells in Muskogee, OK, also contained light, sweet crude. It was a beautiful green and slightly transparent. Crude oil is a magnificent perfume for investors.
He had bought a fractional share of the promoters. The thieves had sold over 100% of the well and couldn’t afford all the part owners to get together and want a piece of it, so they killed it by putting too much fracking fluid in them and opening them up to salt water.
The next one, with an honest developer, in Montgomery County, Kansas, produced 70 barrels of salt water for one barrel of oil and natural gas. It was not commercially viable, the gas was too far from a pipeline. I took some samples of the white sand from 1200 feet deep. It looked like sugar. It ended up spilling into my Betamax. It’s not good news.
While all this was going on, Dow Chemical wanted large amounts of salt water from the wells for research. They kept drilling wells in West Kansas and all they could get was oil.
I spent many hours in the Wichita Kansas well log library. Things that weren’t interesting then would be fine today (5 barrels a day $11.00 per person). I never found anything worth putting together a promotion. Some of these well logs date back to the 19th century and indicate the type, thickness and depth of geological zones.
Few things can match the satisfaction of sitting in the drill booth, freezing to death and watching the drill go round and round. The reading would tell you how far down you were in the geologist would tell you how much further you had to go to get to the desired ones that were believed to contain oil.
Changing the bit was a painstaking process of pulling out several 40-foot lengths of drill pipe, unscrewing the tapered thread that attached it to the next pipe, and storing it until going back down. Sometimes there were minor traces of oil on the bit, but those areas were too insignificant.
What a thrill it was when he injected water into the well and caused it to pour beautiful oil into the wells! The smell was magic. The first thing to do after verifying that you have a promising pay zone is to lay the pipe, cement it, and then drill it into the pay zone.
The water and sand are then pumped down the well at high pressure and into the earthen structure. This caused the rocks to separate and when they came back together with the removal of pressure, the sand would prevent them from closing completely and give a large collection area for the oil to seep through.
Much more fun than playing in the casino, but generally just as rewarding. If you’re wondering what kind of girl is wearing that walks by and rocks, she was invaded by Howard Hughes. It resembles three heavy-duty starter spurs hitting rock as the bit rotates.
The smells aren’t all pink though, some oil wells can produce hydrogen sulfide gas, the gas that smells like rotten eggs. The scary part is that you won’t smell it if it’s strong enough to kill you. A pickup truck, headed for the well, rolled to a stop downwind of the well with the driver dead. The interstate north of Houston had a pothole that had accumulated poisonous hydrogen sulfide, causing several people to die simply driving north on the interstate. Scary, right?