The Story of Oil

natural-gas speeds the engines of a million machines and flowing oil smoothes the movement of the working parts with gas and oil the Motors hump and the wheels roll swiftly and easily from the foothills of Alberta come the largest supplies of oil yet discovered in Canada churner Valley is a long wrinkled bent in the landscape southwest of Calgary set under guard of the Rocky Mountains a fistful of tiny towns are flung out along its 20-mile length it is range country for the herds of half wild horses but rising in the background are the towers of a newer power that is stronger and swifter than they the towns their names from the company oil wells on which they depend for a living small towns catching short routes in the green brown earth they will live so long as the oil well pays and no more in Turner Valley the field has lasted a score of years and a few solid towns have grown and stayed but no one knows how long the wells will flow so farther afield across the pray this for new Wells goes on oil men like the cattle men their neighbors are gamblers they know a freak chance of nature may throw their luck in or out may mean that they stay or go no one knows for sure when a well is sunk whether it will strike oil or not and at the end of a job the workman and his work must be ready to move on leaving the finished well to work for them small and undramatic in the rolling stretch of foothills but there is less guesswork now than there you see when a new well has begun for geologists have learned to read the Ciroc show where oil is to be found at new wells being drilled core samples of rock from each layer tell the structure of the earth below the surface fossils in the cores tell the history of oil fossils are remains of the tiny creatures whose bodies made the oil long ago and forgotten shallow sea zone and limestone are porous kinds of rock in which oil is held in Turner Valley it is on the limestone layer in which the oil traps live whenever a new area is to be explored for a seismograph is an instrument that records the waves of an earthquake one truck erect supportable Derek and digs a miniature well the men filled dynamite into the hole to make a minor earthquake down through the layers of rock when the blast goes off layer of rock shakes with a different wave of vibration the seismograph struck records these vibrations from them geologists can tell what kinds of rock there are how they lie beneath the surface and which are likely to hold oil all the information is collected and samples are analyzed and classified at last a complete map of the geology of the field is known gas can travel underground from place to place through the pores in the rock it drives with it oil and salt water leftover from the ancient shallow seas but where earth is crinkled into dome-shaped folds the oil is trapped under layers of shale or limestone when a well it's sunk it may turn out to be just a dry hole or to water well for a well producing gas and oil a new well has begun on the Foothill Plains first the cellars dug a foundation is laid to hold complicated drilling machinery then a derrick is erected steel girders reach 140 feet high for a tower to work the head block of the drilling gear that will slide repeatedly down from the top as the hole goes deeper a tower to lift the miles of drilling pipe that will be lowered linked by link into the well along the ground pipes are laid ready for use when the well is in itched they will leave the oil to separate storage tanks and take off the waste gases a safe distance from the well cement is mixed four concrete pillars to support the Derrick for the mighty machinery of the drill will work heavily and hard three shifts day and night for half a year perhaps until oil is reached the crew stacked pipe lengths against the side of the derrick ready to put down the well as the hole deepens the draw works is the machine that drives the turning parts the head block shaft of the rotary drill the turning rotary Valon the drill well floor the diamond drill bit revolving underground depth and pressure are checked under the watchful eye and keen hand of the driller vibrations of the break tell him the hardness of the rock below mud lubricates the turning parts and when the pipes are pulled to change the bit mud plaster keeps the well from caving in some modern Derrick's are poor ones that can be put up quickly and taken down for use again they work however in much the same way as older kinds of wells sliding down gradually from the top of the derrick a long rod turning round and round revolves the drill bit that bites through the rocks below it goes down 50 to 200 feet a day sometimes the bit is lost and drillers Heffer at a mile perhaps below the surface frequently the drilling stops well the drill bit has worn out and must be changed all the length of pipe that has been sunk is pulled up and stacked 90 feet of it at once against the side of the derrick the men clamp huge wrenches to unscrew the sections of the pipe they stack it against the derrick again on a platform halfway up the derrick man guides the top of the pipe over to the side and swings the big hook down to the crew below when all the pipe is pulled up the worn drill bit can be replaced then men fasten the new bit and send the lengths of pipe down the hole again screwed tightly together by means of plants and winch then drilling starts again new lengths of pipe are added as the well deepens Hill once again the drill bit wears out and must be changed the crew who pulled the pipes are Roughnecks a name that tells the toughness of their work as the well nears completion the deeper pipes bring up a muddy mixture from underground and changing the drill bit is harder longer work these days not many wells are gushers at spout high in the air or when oil is reached a system of valves is ready to control the flow when the whale strikes oil the Roughnecks pull the pipe length up unstack them from the derrick and roll them outside ready for use again in another well then they put a casing down the well to hold the wall in Turner Valley wells need acid icing to break down the pores of the limestone allowing the oil to flow as it is brought in trucks and piped to the well layer pipes carry off the walls a safe distance from the well where they can be burned the burning flares of the wells across the valley are plumes of smoke by day and Jets of fire at night when the workmen go home from their 8-hour shift oh well when the derrick is down it's a small compact set of valves and pipes a flowing well worked by itself but some whales need a pumping Jack to get up the oil the pumping jack is a kind of robot men have made to work for them day in day out so long as the well last oil is measured in barrels thousands of barrels of the crude oil stock are sometimes stored in field tanks from there the oil men loaded into trucks and take it off to pipes or into some fields to cleaning plan the receiving pit may be just a large hole dug in the ground the pit stores the oil until it is pumped out again to be cleaned or to be sent to the railroads as fuel pipes are laid to serve each individual well but larger pipes leading to the processing plants and refineries serve many wells and companies together each company has a quota of the number of barrels it is allowed to send by pipeline every day at scrubbing and absorption plants gas is separated from the oil and the high-octane gas for aeroplanes is taken out at refineries oil is purified and separated into its commercial products in the cracking plant crude oil heated into vapor pulls in high distilling towers the vapor that rises to the top of the tower liquefies as gasoline from the next highest level comes kerosene then diesel oil and fuel from other types of oil the residue produces tar and asphalt or lubricating oil and wax oil from a million years underground goes out to serve Canadians it is power for our trucks and farm machines and many other kinds of locomotion it smoothes our activities in many ways at home in lubricating grease and oil in wax for floors and cleaning fluids in heating fluids for our stoves in Paris for sealing jars oil and gas and all the byproducts of petroleum are an important part of our modern way of living