Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tex Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Polette and
Speaker 1: I am an editor at how stuff works dot Com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me, as he always does, is senior
Speaker 1: writer and Jonathan Strickland. Next thing you know, Old Jed's
Speaker 1: a millionaire. I see you are ready to talk about
Speaker 1: black gold. Yes, Texas t the technology of oil drilling.
Speaker 1: So first you get your shotgun, and then you go
Speaker 1: hunting for some food, and up from the ground comes
Speaker 1: a bubbling crude. You know, there are more efficient ways
Speaker 1: to drill for oil than I don't know. That's pretty efficient.
Speaker 1: You just have to be insanely lucky. No, that is
Speaker 1: actually not the way one normally looks for oil or
Speaker 1: drills for oil um and the process does involve quite
Speaker 1: a bit of technology. Some of it is fairly simple
Speaker 1: tech when you look at it from you know, as
Speaker 1: far as a sophistication standpoint. But without it we wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to get to oil the way we do.
Speaker 1: Our our society would be completely different. We certainly wouldn't
Speaker 1: be podcasting right now. Too much of our technology is
Speaker 1: based off of oil or is powered by stuff that
Speaker 1: gets his power ultimately through oil. So um, and of
Speaker 1: course it's been in the news a lot lately. And yeah,
Speaker 1: as we've been reading through some of the articles on
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot Com, which I encourage you to
Speaker 1: do so, especially since Jonathan put all that time into
Speaker 1: updating some of those. Um, we we were looking at
Speaker 1: the technology and thinking, you know, this is kind of
Speaker 1: interesting as a topic that we haven't talked about. I mean,
Speaker 1: is it's kind of off our normal and beaten path.
Speaker 1: But yeah, some of it's pretty amazing how they've they
Speaker 1: can find oil and then you know the fact that
Speaker 1: they can even go down as far as they did
Speaker 1: for the deep Water Horizon, well that was pretty phenomenal
Speaker 1: create the well itself. Even though there are problems. We
Speaker 1: can talk about some of the equipment that they would
Speaker 1: use yea, and we can talk about why why it
Speaker 1: was not just the fact that you know, the blowout
Speaker 1: was a huge problem with the deep Water Horizon, but
Speaker 1: also why it's a problem that, uh, like, why couldn't
Speaker 1: they fix that as opposed to being able to fix
Speaker 1: it on in other situations. We'll get into that UM.
Speaker 1: Once we get under pressure, do do UM. So starting off,
Speaker 1: let's talk about how you would find oil before you
Speaker 1: even start drilling UM. Now, in the olden days, way
Speaker 1: back when people were first starting to drill for oil,
Speaker 1: you pretty much had to look around and really observe
Speaker 1: the geographic features of the region you were in and
Speaker 1: really needed the help of the geologists, someone who was
Speaker 1: who was learned in the ways of things like rock formations,
Speaker 1: just the kinds of rocks that were in the region,
Speaker 1: because you need to look for specifics sort of rocks
Speaker 1: and soil that would be indicative that there, at least
Speaker 1: is the potential for oil to be present. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: you still need geologists, Oh yeah, you don't. They're definitely
Speaker 1: a very important part of finding oil. It's just that
Speaker 1: now they have more tools at their disposal than just
Speaker 1: their eyes. That's true, because they're using they basically look
Speaker 1: for changes in the Earth's gravitational field that can indicate
Speaker 1: that there's oil nearby. That's that's one of the methods. Yeah. Really,
Speaker 1: what they're what they're trying to do is they're looking
Speaker 1: for oil flows. Now, when I say looking. Obviously they
Speaker 1: can't see the oil because it's it's underground or underwater,
Speaker 1: well at least not in most cases. Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: can see the oil, you really don't need your geologists there.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are there are things like you know,
Speaker 1: oil sands, when there's a lot more obvious that there
Speaker 1: is oil present. But in those cases you can't, you know,
Speaker 1: just slurp it up. There's a lot of work to
Speaker 1: be done. And we're not we didn't really at least
Speaker 1: I didn't prepare for that particular topic. But yeah, and
Speaker 1: in those cases you can actually see that there is petroleum,
Speaker 1: and I'm I would imagine, um, just a guess, you
Speaker 1: could probably smell it too. Actually, they geologists might use sniffers,
Speaker 1: which are electronic sensors that can detect the presence of oil,
Speaker 1: so they could they could smell for it. They could
Speaker 1: use the gravitational sensors that the PLTT was talking about.
Speaker 1: They could also use uh magnetic sensors to detect changes
Speaker 1: in the Earth's magnetic field, which would be the result
Speaker 1: of oil flowing sometimes uh several thousand feet below the
Speaker 1: surface of the Earth. And then one of the most
Speaker 1: common ways is they create vibrations in the earth and
Speaker 1: then listen for the It's kind of like an echo.
Speaker 1: You're listening for the reflection of the vibration you've sent
Speaker 1: into the earth to detect what kind of rock is
Speaker 1: beneath you. So you are essentially thumping the earth and
Speaker 1: listening to hear what kind of thing. Yeah, you're It's
Speaker 1: like when you pick up a melon and you thump
Speaker 1: it to see if it's right to eat, except in
Speaker 1: this case, you're thumping the earth to see if there's
Speaker 1: any oil down there. And uh. And when I say thumping,
Speaker 1: sometimes literally they are thumping the earth, except they're doing
Speaker 1: it with a massive truck, a thumber truck. A thumber truck. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think I had one of those drive down my
Speaker 1: street the other day. Yeah. I actually call them flower
Speaker 1: and they tell me that he can call me flower
Speaker 1: if he wants to. It's a thumber truck. Anyway, Thumper
Speaker 1: was a rabbit, that's true. Well, I'll screw up my
Speaker 1: own joke. That's okay. Somebody will write in ye and like, listen,
Speaker 1: I'm a Bambi enthusiast, and let me tell you so. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the Thumber nice, the thumper truck has these big heavy
Speaker 1: plates that they will raise and lower against the ground.
Speaker 1: They hit the ground really hard, and then you have microphones,
Speaker 1: very sensitive microphones set up around the area around the
Speaker 1: region to detect the vibrations, and based upon the quality
Speaker 1: of those vibrations, you can tell whether or not there's
Speaker 1: oil flowing underneath the surface. Um. There's also they could
Speaker 1: also use explosives to do the same thing. So you
Speaker 1: could dig a hole and put some explosives in or
Speaker 1: in the case of if you're if you're trying to
Speaker 1: search for oil in the water, you may throw explosives
Speaker 1: over the side of the boat. Um. Not recommended. And
Speaker 1: there are other ways to to get the same effect. Well,
Speaker 1: there's the compressed air gun, yes, which is much safer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can use a compressed air gun. You fire compressed
Speaker 1: air at the ground and that creates the the vibration
Speaker 1: you need to you know, then you listen to her
Speaker 1: if there's the correct frequency that would indicate that there's
Speaker 1: oil beneath the ground. Yeah. And actually, uh, I sort
Speaker 1: of sort of misspoke when I said that we really
Speaker 1: haven't talked about this kind of thing before. Because Boyle
Speaker 1: has made a cameo appearance in another recent podcast, auto
Speaker 1: tune because some of them, right, the audio technology that
Speaker 1: they use, that's what ye. The founder of auto tune
Speaker 1: originally was a geologist who worked on this kind of technology, yep,
Speaker 1: And that that technology evolved and got used for the
Speaker 1: sound correcting gizmo that we all know and a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't love. Right. So, if you've listened to
Speaker 1: auto tune, the news is version of double Rainbow, which
Speaker 1: is phenomenal. By the way, you two are experiencing the
Speaker 1: joy of the technology that can help you find oil
Speaker 1: in a really twisted way. So but say they find oil,
Speaker 1: all right, they found oil. Now now comes the point
Speaker 1: where they have to start drilling down so they can
Speaker 1: get to the oil. Uh. And drilling is a very
Speaker 1: involved process. The first thing they have to do they
Speaker 1: have to, assuming that it's land based, clear the land
Speaker 1: and they have to level it off so that they
Speaker 1: can build an oil rig to to start drilling. Um,
Speaker 1: they have to have water in the trilling process. Actually,
Speaker 1: water is very important. They use water to mix with
Speaker 1: dirt to create mud. They use the mud to help
Speaker 1: pump or really to push the the the rock that
Speaker 1: gets broken up as the drill is drilling down into
Speaker 1: the earth. So uh, they essentially are pumping mud down
Speaker 1: into the hole to help clear the rock out of
Speaker 1: the way as the drill drills down. Um, So you've
Speaker 1: gotta have a water supply, So either you need water
Speaker 1: in near buy or if there's not any water, you
Speaker 1: need to drill the water well. But you have to
Speaker 1: have water to to two for this process. The water
Speaker 1: based rigs don't have this problem. Now there's there's usually
Speaker 1: quite a lot of water in the offshore drilling, yes, process,
Speaker 1: but on land, the crew does need to dig a
Speaker 1: reserve pit which they used to get rid of the
Speaker 1: rock cuttings and some of the mud. Um. They line
Speaker 1: it with plastic, you know, in an attempt to protect
Speaker 1: the environment, you don't want anything leaching into the water
Speaker 1: supply of the local area. And also if it's a
Speaker 1: certain areas, certain protected areas, they aren't even allowed to
Speaker 1: do the reserve pit. They have to actually truck all
Speaker 1: the rock that they dig up offsite. But in most
Speaker 1: cases they'll just they'll dig this reserve pit and that's
Speaker 1: where they they're they're putting all the waste rock. Essentially,
Speaker 1: they also need to build a seller. Yeah, apparently to
Speaker 1: store the wine. That's exactly why they need to do that.
Speaker 1: That's providing the foundation of where the rig's gonna go. Right. So,
Speaker 1: once they've got the preparations out of the way, they
Speaker 1: start to put together the rig. They ship in all
Speaker 1: the stuff and they start assembling it. The rigs power
Speaker 1: supply is all well. Diesel engines provide the power. They
Speaker 1: provide power to electrical generators, which in turn provide electrical
Speaker 1: power to the mechanical systems on the rig, the rig itself.
Speaker 1: Most people are familiar with the really tall tower that
Speaker 1: you can see on oil rigs, the derrick. Um, you
Speaker 1: might wonder why those towers are there. I mean, most
Speaker 1: of the time we see like the old movies where
Speaker 1: we'll see the oil shooting out the top of the
Speaker 1: derek and you think, well, what's what the heck is
Speaker 1: the purpose of that thing? Um, it's actually there so
Speaker 1: that the oil workers can can assemble the pipe that
Speaker 1: is needed to continue to drive the drill bit down
Speaker 1: further and further into the hole. Because you know, as
Speaker 1: you make progress, the drill bit goes further down. You
Speaker 1: have to extend that that that pipe so the drill
Speaker 1: bit can keep going down well. The tower is there
Speaker 1: so that you can put another length of pipe on
Speaker 1: the end, and these links of piper about thirty feet long. UM.
Speaker 1: This is true both for the oil for the oil
Speaker 1: for the land based and the water based oil drilling,
Speaker 1: because they'll they'll have to and for the water based one,
Speaker 1: actually the pipe has to be even longer because first
Speaker 1: you have to get your drill bit all the way
Speaker 1: down to the ground, so you have to get it
Speaker 1: through all the water first, and then you have to
Speaker 1: keep extending it. So the the the drill of course
Speaker 1: is based off rotation. It's a big turntable that is
Speaker 1: turned by and by the generators, the electric motors that
Speaker 1: are powered by the generators rather and UH that turns
Speaker 1: the the drill string UM and the drill bit which
Speaker 1: is at the very bottom of it. There's a there's
Speaker 1: a color above the drill bit. The color is a
Speaker 1: thicker pipe that fits around the drill string and it
Speaker 1: uh its purpose is to protect the d but it's
Speaker 1: also to provide some pressure to push downwards so that
Speaker 1: the drill bid is constantly digging down, not just spinning
Speaker 1: of anything happening there. And and they line the the
Speaker 1: well that they're drilling with a big pipe right to
Speaker 1: keep it from collapsing in on itself, because it wouldn't
Speaker 1: do any good to drill a hole if it you know,
Speaker 1: if two feet down the hole starts to collapse in
Speaker 1: on itself. So it's a it's a really involved process really,
Speaker 1: I mean, it takes a lot of manual labor to
Speaker 1: get that going. And once the drill bid is is
Speaker 1: dragging up the or knocking out rock, that's when they
Speaker 1: start pumping the mud down to bring the bits of
Speaker 1: rock up and they collect those off and they put
Speaker 1: in the in the pit um right. That that is
Speaker 1: another function of the casing the liner and that goes
Speaker 1: around is that it does help them drilling mud to
Speaker 1: circulate while they are drilling and get you know, the
Speaker 1: chips out and everything else that needs to come out
Speaker 1: because uh, you know, the circulation system is responsible for
Speaker 1: forgetting the mud um and and it's you know, it
Speaker 1: helps move things in and out. It's very important that
Speaker 1: they've got and it's man up of a number of
Speaker 1: different pieces. Of course, it's got a pump in it
Speaker 1: and hoses. Um. There is a specific line to get
Speaker 1: the mud out of the hole. Um there's a shaker
Speaker 1: that gets the rock cuttings out of the mud so
Speaker 1: that I you know, they can recycle it because they
Speaker 1: do that. Um, they do that actually in the get
Speaker 1: this this is the technical term mud pit. Yes, the
Speaker 1: mud pit. They also they also occasionally have to make
Speaker 1: some new mud. Um. You know, eventually they just they
Speaker 1: have to add more, especially once the holes getting deeper
Speaker 1: and deeper. Um, the as they're digging down there. What
Speaker 1: the goal here is to get to the point where
Speaker 1: you you are just hitting the pocket of oil that's
Speaker 1: underneath the surface. You know, you're not the Again that
Speaker 1: image of the oil shooting up through the derek, that's
Speaker 1: what we call a blowback, and that's not a good
Speaker 1: thing necessarily. It's actually very dangerous thing. Blowback or blow out, blowout, sorry,
Speaker 1: blowout and yeah, there's you don't want those, that's bad.
Speaker 1: The reason for those blowouts, by the way, is because
Speaker 1: that oil is also mixed with natural gas, and both
Speaker 1: the oil and the gas are under immense pressure because
Speaker 1: you've got all this these layers of rock on top
Speaker 1: of them. So when you drill a hole into the
Speaker 1: pocket that has all the gas and oil in it,
Speaker 1: then you've got a release from that pressure and the
Speaker 1: blowout can be very dangerous. In fact, that's what happened
Speaker 1: at deep water Horizons where there was a blowout which
Speaker 1: ended up causing um extensive damage. It ended up eventually
Speaker 1: sinking that rig and very tragically killed eleven of the
Speaker 1: workers on board that rig um the explosion did. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so you don't you don't want those blowouts, even
Speaker 1: though they're big dramatic moments and movies, you don't want
Speaker 1: to see that happen. Yeah. And in the movies they
Speaker 1: make it look like it's a it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: They strike oil and it comes gushing out the top
Speaker 1: of the dereck and everybody you know, throws their hat
Speaker 1: in the air and hollers and uh and does a
Speaker 1: little prospect or dance. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's really the case.
Speaker 1: That And and it's you know, extremely toxic. It's not
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that you want on your skin.
Speaker 1: So so, and in the environment, the the they have
Speaker 1: blowout prevent ers as they as they're digging. A blowout
Speaker 1: preventer is a pretty simple design. It's really just a
Speaker 1: clamp um. It's powered by very massive hydraulic system. Uh.
Speaker 1: That is extremely powerful. That uh, and it's at the
Speaker 1: very top of the well. It's the well cap where
Speaker 1: where that where it connects to the drilling equipment. And
Speaker 1: then that may seem like a misnomer because if you've
Speaker 1: been watching the coverage of the deep Water Horizon thing,
Speaker 1: you might say, no, no, the blow up preventers at
Speaker 1: things sitting on the floor of the sea. You know
Speaker 1: that's not No, that is at the top of the
Speaker 1: well because the well goes down into the ground there.
Speaker 1: So yes, it is at the top of the well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if it were on land, it would be right there
Speaker 1: at the surface of the ground, just right red surface
Speaker 1: level rather as opposed to underneath the water. But I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the top of the well. So uh if in
Speaker 1: the case of a blowout, what you normally would have happened,
Speaker 1: either you would have a sensor that would indicate that
Speaker 1: something bad is happening and it would automatically, uh activate
Speaker 1: the blow up preventer, or you would use a manual
Speaker 1: system like you would actually pull a lever, press a
Speaker 1: button to activate it and the clamp closes in on
Speaker 1: the casing and steals it off. Yeah, it's got a
Speaker 1: hydraulic ram that just you know, slam shut and basically
Speaker 1: is supposed to cut off that flow. Unfortunately, in the
Speaker 1: case of the deep water horizon UM, the blow up
Speaker 1: preventer malfunctioned and just never it never activated, so there
Speaker 1: was no way to stop the the gas and oil
Speaker 1: from from essentially erupting from this well. UM. So normally
Speaker 1: with the drilling process again, you wouldn't drill to that point.
Speaker 1: You would drill to the point where you were detecting oil.
Speaker 1: You know that it was clear that oil was present,
Speaker 1: but you wouldn't keep going until it was just shooting
Speaker 1: out at the top of the dairy. You would replace
Speaker 1: the rig with an oil production uh system, So you
Speaker 1: would actually deconstruct the rig and put in a new
Speaker 1: system there to to tap and collect the oil and
Speaker 1: in a very controlled manner, because that you know, that's
Speaker 1: going to be the least dangerous way of collecting the
Speaker 1: oil UM. Right. You don't want to puncture the ground,
Speaker 1: the part of the strata of rock um stratum of
Speaker 1: rock that is holding the oil in until you're ready
Speaker 1: to collect it, because otherwise you're going to lose a
Speaker 1: lot of it or there will be a blowout. So
Speaker 1: you want to have everything in place and ready to
Speaker 1: go into you, you know, finally puncture that that rock
Speaker 1: area and then you can the oil will come up
Speaker 1: through the well. And the way the way they do
Speaker 1: that is once they've got they've reached the well depth
Speaker 1: that they need to get to, they actually puncture holes
Speaker 1: in the well casing at the very base of it
Speaker 1: and uh and they use they seal it off first,
Speaker 1: and then what they do is when they deconstruct the
Speaker 1: rig and then move it out of the way they're
Speaker 1: bringing up pump and the pumps are those things that
Speaker 1: you see if you ever watch a movie set in
Speaker 1: like Texas or whatever, and you see those big metal
Speaker 1: things that are swiveling up and down, looks like giant
Speaker 1: seesaw type things. Those are the pumps. And what the
Speaker 1: pumps do is they have a rod that goes down
Speaker 1: into the well um that creates suction as it as
Speaker 1: it moves up and down, and that's what allows them
Speaker 1: to draw oil out of the well in a controlled
Speaker 1: manner um. And uh It's occasionally the oil itself is
Speaker 1: too heavy to pull up on its own, so what
Speaker 1: they'll do is they'll drill a second hold down and
Speaker 1: they'll pump steam into that that oil pocket essentially so
Speaker 1: that they can pull the oil up out of the hole. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: now we talked to a little bit about deep water
Speaker 1: horizon already. Um oh, I'm sorry. Were you going to
Speaker 1: to add something else? I was gonna addum that the
Speaker 1: device I don't I didn't remember you saying that. The
Speaker 1: device that they used to puncture um the well and
Speaker 1: put it into production is the perforating gun. Yes, and
Speaker 1: they lower that down there. It's got a little explosive
Speaker 1: charge and basically they perforate the casing and put a
Speaker 1: tube in there um and then use a packer to uh,
Speaker 1: to form a seal around the outside of the tubing.
Speaker 1: And then theoretically the well is complete, right right, the
Speaker 1: tubing is is the only way in and out of
Speaker 1: that well at that point. So and then they have
Speaker 1: a Christmas tree. Yeah, they do. It's a that's that's
Speaker 1: a structure with lots of valves on it. It's actually
Speaker 1: called a Christmas tree. Pullette was not not being I
Speaker 1: wasn't he wasn't goofy. Well, he was a little a
Speaker 1: little goofy, but not that goofy. Yeah, it's actually a
Speaker 1: device with lots of valves at the top and uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's cemented in and it's part of it. But anyway,
Speaker 1: that's that's part of the control system to allow for
Speaker 1: the controlled extraction of oil. And yeah, Christmas tree, So
Speaker 1: it's Christmas all year round on the oil rig in
Speaker 1: some ways, I suppose. So. So yeah, going back to
Speaker 1: the deep water horizon issues, so that these are if
Speaker 1: you're out in deep water, they're really only two major
Speaker 1: ways that you can um you can drill for oil.
Speaker 1: One is to use a drill ship, which is pretty
Speaker 1: much what sounds like. It's a big boat that happens
Speaker 1: to have a hole in the center of it. Somebody
Speaker 1: is going right in that it's a big ship. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's the definition of ship versus boat. There is no
Speaker 1: clear delineation. There's that You could say that a boat
Speaker 1: is small enough to fit on a ship, and a
Speaker 1: ship is big enough to hold a boat, but that
Speaker 1: is not That's like what's a mountain versus a hill. Well,
Speaker 1: a hill is smaller than a mountain. That is not
Speaker 1: a good enough definition. All squares are rectangles, but not
Speaker 1: all rectangles are squares. So this boat has a hole
Speaker 1: in it, and uh right in and the drill extends
Speaker 1: down through the hole and that's where they pump the
Speaker 1: water and mud or whatever and down into it's it's
Speaker 1: it's just like the land based one, except you're on
Speaker 1: a boat, on a ship at sea and uh. But
Speaker 1: otherwise you would have an oil rig on the top
Speaker 1: with a derrick and everything to extend the pipe down
Speaker 1: to the sea floor bed and then further down as
Speaker 1: you drill down into the well. Uh. The other option
Speaker 1: is a semi submersible MODU, which is a mobile offshore
Speaker 1: drilling unit. Um. That's what deep Water Horizon was. It
Speaker 1: was a semi submersible and uh that those float on
Speaker 1: these big pontoons. They float out. They actually have a
Speaker 1: power system where you can pilot them out to the
Speaker 1: proper spot in the ocean and then you use you
Speaker 1: usually use anchors, several anchors to keep you in one
Speaker 1: specific spot on the ocean, and you use a very
Speaker 1: sophisticated This is actually where sophisticated technology comes to play.
Speaker 1: There's a sophisticated computer system that measures the tension on
Speaker 1: each line down to each anchor and then maintains the
Speaker 1: proper tension to keep the semi submersible in place. You
Speaker 1: know what that's called. Right, what's that anchor management? I'm
Speaker 1: gonna need some of that in a second. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I think I just had an aneurysm. So anyway, Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: they might be up to a dozen anchors to keep
Speaker 1: these things in place. And then again you have a
Speaker 1: derrick on top of this this uh, this semi submersible vehicle,
Speaker 1: and you drill down. Now, if you're in shallower water,
Speaker 1: you have a couple of other options. Um, there's a
Speaker 1: kind of modu called a jack up jacket. What you
Speaker 1: do is it's again a semi submersible, kind of barge submersible.
Speaker 1: Is it? It floats on top, doesn't it. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean it can have pontoons as well, but most of
Speaker 1: them are on barges, so yeah, most of them do
Speaker 1: just float on the surface. Well, you would float it
Speaker 1: out to the right location. And again this is where
Speaker 1: you're in shallow ish water, like up to around five
Speaker 1: ft which is still you know, it's pretty deep, but
Speaker 1: shallow when you compare to deep water drilling. Um, when
Speaker 1: you get to where you want to go, you actually
Speaker 1: it can extend legs down from the barge to the
Speaker 1: sea floor, so you you create a tripod essentially a stand. Um,
Speaker 1: I think there's only three legs. Sometimes I guess there
Speaker 1: could be four. But you once you hit the cea floor,
Speaker 1: you then keep continue extending the legs, which raises the
Speaker 1: barge out of the water. And you keep doing that
Speaker 1: to you get to the proper height. And of course
Speaker 1: you may have to extend one leg more than the
Speaker 1: other two because it's at a slightly different height on
Speaker 1: the sea floor. But um, you do this so that
Speaker 1: the reason why you go above the waves, so that
Speaker 1: the motion of the ocean doesn't interfere with your drilling activities.
Speaker 1: Now I'm gonna be singing rock lobster all day long. Thanks. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of ruins in Mesopotamia. Um. And
Speaker 1: then the other method is just a submersible mobile offshore
Speaker 1: drilling unit. And this this these are not used that often,
Speaker 1: but um, it's a it's a barge that actually sinks
Speaker 1: kind of. It goes down to the sea floor and
Speaker 1: then uh, the steel posts on the barge extend up
Speaker 1: and then you build your drilling platform on the posts.
Speaker 1: So you've got a barge sitting at the bottom of
Speaker 1: the ocean. Uh. And when I say bottom of the ocean,
Speaker 1: I'm talking like feet so it's not that deep, right,
Speaker 1: comparatively speaking. Um. And then you got the posts on
Speaker 1: the bargees deck and you build the rig on top
Speaker 1: of the posts. So again the rig is is suspended
Speaker 1: above the waterline. Now, the reason why one of the
Speaker 1: reasons there are many reasons why the deepwater horizon issue
Speaker 1: this is the oil spill in the Gulf in case
Speaker 1: you weren't aware that that was what the name of
Speaker 1: the actual semi submersible was. Um. There are many reasons
Speaker 1: why this problem is very difficult to handle, and chief
Speaker 1: among them is just that it is at an incredible depth.
Speaker 1: I mean that we're talking that the the well head
Speaker 1: itself is so far below the surface of the ocean.
Speaker 1: It's very difficult to get there. Right. We don't really
Speaker 1: understand that much about the ocean at this depth. Because
Speaker 1: it's there, we have very limited means of getting down
Speaker 1: there and exploring the pressure of the water at that
Speaker 1: point is pretty intense. So there are very few vehicles
Speaker 1: that we have of that can safely navigate that that depth. UM.
Speaker 1: It's not like divers can just hop in and you know,
Speaker 1: go down and work with it by hand. For people
Speaker 1: just getting a look at it was was pretty complicated,
Speaker 1: especially considering that you know the explosion and fire where
Speaker 1: that you have to get that under control first. UM.
Speaker 1: So really the depth is the major point. Another problem
Speaker 1: is just that it's it is really hard to estimate
Speaker 1: exactly how bad the problem is. UM. The earliest accounts
Speaker 1: had it just being a few thousand barrels of oil
Speaker 1: a day, which when I say just a few thousand
Speaker 1: barrel of oils forty two gallons of oil, it's a
Speaker 1: lot of oil. But the worst case scenario documents suggested
Speaker 1: that it could be as bad as a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: barrels of oil a day. So clearly this is a
Speaker 1: this could be an enormous issue UM. And as we're
Speaker 1: recording this podcast, they're there are high hopes that the
Speaker 1: the replacement well is going to cap it UH to
Speaker 1: the point where where we can actually address the issue
Speaker 1: more thoroughly. We'll have to wait and see if it works,
Speaker 1: but we're hoping because the other UM predictions for this
Speaker 1: said that the earliest we would be able to really
Speaker 1: address the problem would be August, and it's it's July
Speaker 1: of two thousand and ten as we record this, so um,
Speaker 1: considering that the initial event happened back in April, that's
Speaker 1: that's bad news. That's a lot of oil. Who they
Speaker 1: are BP is still working on drilling relief wells as
Speaker 1: we speak. And although you might believe that they are
Speaker 1: there to relieve pressure, they're actually not. From what I
Speaker 1: understand from listening to uh an account on npr UM. Basically,
Speaker 1: what they're going to do is try to intercept the
Speaker 1: well itself, the original well, and shut it down from inside.
Speaker 1: So that's the point, and the thing is at this depth,
Speaker 1: as you were saying earlier, Nathan Um, it's it's very complicated.
Speaker 1: They want to make sure that they're they're moving slowly
Speaker 1: because they want to make sure that they don't do
Speaker 1: additional damage and hurt their chances of getting it taken
Speaker 1: care of sooner, which I think was a source of
Speaker 1: frustration for a lot of people because they wanted it
Speaker 1: done and taking care of sooner rather than later. But
Speaker 1: they said, look, we've got to take the time. So
Speaker 1: it's it's it's very challenging to drill these wells and
Speaker 1: make them work properly, and when accidents happen like this, Um,
Speaker 1: mistakes happen. The thing is fixing them is not a
Speaker 1: simple task either, and relies on quite a bit of
Speaker 1: technology to make it work. So I think we both
Speaker 1: found it, you know, kind of fascinating, the technology that
Speaker 1: they used to make it work at all. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's a fascinating and sobering Oh, definitely subjects at any rate. Uh,
Speaker 1: but you know, the idea behind it is still pretty simple,
Speaker 1: drilling a hole down until you get but they things
Speaker 1: that you need to make that work in a safe
Speaker 1: and controlled way are pretty impressive in practice. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: turns out we're complicated that you would originally imagine. Well,
Speaker 1: that was a good discussion about oil drilling, um and
Speaker 1: not not too terribly depressing. So good on us while
Speaker 1: we were just trying to take it from the middle ground,
Speaker 1: the technical aspect, this is how you do it. Now
Speaker 1: they told you how to do it. Here's the disclaimer. No,
Speaker 1: no one's gonna come up a well reg I mean,
Speaker 1: who could. We're going to get an email someone's gonna
Speaker 1: be I struck gold. Hey, now let Gold Texas team.
Speaker 1: So we could talk about that in the future too.
Speaker 1: The minerals and getting that out. I don't know that
Speaker 1: sounds like stuff from the science left to me. That
Speaker 1: sounds science like that, physics, numbers and stuff, physics and geology.
Speaker 1: They can take that. All right, guys, we are going
Speaker 1: to wrap this up, but if you have any questions
Speaker 1: or topic suggestions you would like us to tackle in
Speaker 1: the future, you can write us. Our email address is
Speaker 1: text stuff at how stuff Works dot com, and Chris
Speaker 1: and I will talk to you again really soon if
Speaker 1: you're a tech stuff and be sure to check us
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