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Crude Oil Is A Magnificent, And Deadly Perfume
Nov 20th
They are saying that the oil leak is “LIGHT-SWEET CRUDE” AND IS LESS HAZARDOUS TO MARINE LIFE.
Our first and second oil wells in Muskogee, OK was also light-sweet crude. It was a beautiful green and slightly transparent. Crude Oil Is A Magnificent Perfume to investors.
I had purchased a fractional interest from the promoters. The crooks had sold more than 100% of the well and could not afford for all partial owners get together and want a share, so they killed it by putting too much fracturing liquid in them and opening them up to salt water.
Our next one, with an honest promoter, in Montgomery County, Kansas produced 70 barrels salt water to one-barrel oil and natural gas. Not commercially viable, gas was too far from a pipeline. I took some samples of the white sand from 1200 feet down. It looked like sugar. It ended up getting spilled into my Betamax. Not good news.
While all this was going on, Dow Chemical wanted large quantities of the salt water from wells for research. They kept drilling wells in West Kansas and all they could get was oil.
I spent many hours in the well logs library of Wichita Kansas. Things uninteresting then would be nice today (5 barrels per day $11.00 per.) I never found anything worth putting together a promotion. Some of these well logs went back as far as the 1800s and would note the type, the thickness, and the depth of geologic zones.
Few things can equal the satisfaction of sitting in the drilling shack, freezing to death, and watching the drill going round and round. The readout would tell you how far down you were in the geologist would tell you how much further you had to go to get to those on desired and believed to contain oil.
Changing the drill bit was a laborious process of pulling up multiple 40 foot lengths of drill pipe, unscrewing the tapered thread joining it to the next pipe and storing it until going back down. Sometimes there would be minor traces of oil on the bit but those zones were too insignificant.
What a thrill it was when he blowing the well with water and having it flush beautiful oil out on to the pits. The odor was the magic. The first thing you have to do after verifying that you have a promising pay zone is set pipe, cement it and then perforate it at the pay zone.
Then water and sand is pumped down the well at high pressure and out into the structure of the earth. This was the cause the rocks to separate and when they came back together with the removal of the pressure, the sand would prevent them closing completely up and give a large collection area for the oil to seep through.
A lot more fun than playing at the casino but usually just about as rewarding. If you’re wondering what kind of girl that takes to go through yours and rocks, it was invaded by Howard Hughes. It resembles three heavy duty boot spurs that punches at the rock as the drill bit rotates.
The odors are not all roses though, some oil wells can produce hydrogen sulfide gas, the rotten eggs smelling gas. The scary part is that you will not smell it if it is strong enough to kill you. One pickup truck, going to the well, rolled to a stop downwind of the well with the driver dead. The interstate going north out of Houston had a dip that had collected some poisonous hydrogen sulfide resulting in several people dying just driving north on the interstate. Scary, no?
Wind Energy Becomes The Latest Victim of The Government Spending Review
Nov 19th
The previous government had allocated 60 million for the upgrade of the ports, mainly in the north-east, in order for them to accommodate the next generation of giant wind turbine production. It is believed that staff at the DECC (Department of Energy and Climate Change) continue to fight for the funding required to go ahead with the project, albeit with minimum support from the Department of Business. Both the DECC and Department of Business were initially set to provide half of the 60 million each, but this is now looking highly unlikely.
Furthermore, the nuclear industry has successfully secured its future budget to decommission the country’s old reactors, a process undertaken by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA). In 2010, approximately 60% of the NDA’s budget derived from the DECC. This equates to some 1.7 billion, or roughly 40% of the DECC’s entire budget.
It has also emerged that both Siemens and General Electric have pledged to invest 180 million in two new manufacturing facilities in Britain, however, this promise is conditional on the necessary work on nearby ports.
As a means of raising the requisite funds, energy secretary Chris Huhne has founded a Green Investment Bank which will need to take public funds for existing renewable and low-carbon initiatives in order to raise enough capital.
The scrapping of these plans would not only prove to be a huge dent in the UK’s climate change objectives, but will also reflect badly on the Prime Minister, whose promise to lead the ‘greenest government ever’ looks to have been undermined. Although the matter has not yet been finalised (there will be a parliamentary debate held on the issue on Tuesday 12th October), it seems that the best anyone can hope for is the securing of funds sufficient to upgrade just one of the three ports.
With the apparent indifference of the government towards the development of a leading wind energy development programme, the burden may fall more heavily on the public. Already there has been a rise in the level of small wind turbines cropping up across the country, and this trend will only become more popular in times to come in line with the general move towards creating a greener, eco-friendly society.
The decision of the coalition to scrap such innovative programmes has been seen by many commentators as an indication that the government are not providing a stable platform from which to grow out of the recession. Recently, an 80 million loan to the Sheffield Forgemasters firm was axed by the government, and it seems a similar fate awaits the port modification projects in the north-east of England.