What I’ve been up to lately is trying to find oil.
This photo sums up one of the places I visited this morning as a way of finding out some information vital to the proposal of drilling an exploration well nearby:
Right next to that piece of walking steakburger’s head is a head of a productive oil well. Most wells in this particular field need a pump jack, and since this particular field has no limitation on the spacing of the wells, there were times when I saw at least five different producing oil wells, all with their pump jack heads a’bobbin’.
Across the road from where I took the steer photo was one oil well where you can see the pump jack, but look to the left in the background and you’ll notice the associated flame from the burning gas flare:
You would think someone would capture that gas and sell it because of the prices, but I’m told that sour gas is in the area, and it’s just too expensive (even now) to deal with the hazards associated with sour gas that can be produced with the oil on some of these wells. I can’t say for certain that’s what’s going on here, but it’s an easy assumption to make.
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Hey Walt Ol’ Son! WTF!?!
The Perfessor
Hey… I’ve been busy. Raping the earth for profit is hard and sweaty work.
No seriously, dude, I mean WTF? You are gone for a month of Sundays and you send us pictures of Cows? COWS? At least they should have been Cows Texas Style!
The Perfessor
[...] the husband leaving me here all alone every day going back to work in his field (field, heh), here’s a link with a couple of pictures of one of [...]
Dude! it is now official! Even your Wife has posted more than you! You ought to be embarrassed by your lame self!
The Perfessor
Funny, the Gas isn’t ecenomical because it has too much sulfer(H2S). So they just burn it into the atomosphere. So they turn it into Gas or heating fuel where they have to put in something to make it smell like eggs, oh something like H2S. You’ld think they could just skip a few steps and save money, but i guess chemistry doesn’t work like that.
Large volumes of sour gas(H2S) can be handled, but processing it is costly for a whole host of reasons. I’m clueless on the details, but sour gas embrittles the pipes it flows through. Storing sour gas would mean using stainless steel processing equipment, making the costs rise considerably. The volumes of gas involved here may not make the recovery economic.
Geek alert! Geek alert! Please proceed to the nearest “Pie in the face/funny ending to this sketch” exit!
The Perfessor