Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The Origins of Oil

Joebob, these oil fields you are talking about have been drilled for the most part as a vertical well only. Just been in the last few years that horizontal drilling has come on the scene.
When they drill, the oil guys target a formation for where they think the oil will be. They just drill past maybe 3 to 5 formations. They only went after the oil in a certain one formation. After the depth they are after is reached on a vertical well, wire line is run to gather all information needed before they blast holes in the casing at the chosen spots. Then the well is has a frac job. Oil then flowed into the casing and they pumped it out.
Now days instead of vertical they can do vertical to horizontal.

A 8,000 vertical that only goes 8,000 feet down. Horizontals will basically go the same depth, but go another 4,000 or so feet at the horizontal.
The oil guys are trying to hit a certain formation in the ground.

Dude, we're talking about cases of old wells that have suddenly started producing at unexpected and old dates.

You think I'm making this up or don't know the difference of what you are talking about? Google it up. There are cases of this stuff since the 70s of oil migrating from deeper in the earth somewhere. Not cases of oil being extracted but of oil migrating on its on to refill old fields.

The origin of oil is not established conclusively.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin

the stone age lasted over 3 million yrs, Bronze about 1500 yrs, ...the oil age is still relatively young.

If you see how widespread & important and valuable iron became in revolutionary changing life,society, agriculture, construction,
and expansive military empire/ power bases in a rather simplistic world that didn't have anything like the variety of technology choices
we have today, you might re-evaluate it compared to oil.
At the time of the IA, armies produced the prototype of every weapon that was developed for the next three thousand years.
that fact might help put the value of iron into better perspective.

It resulted in dramatic increase in the frequency of war...
-The armies of the Iron Age were the first to practice conscription on a regular basis
-Military service was no longer limited to defense in times of threat but extended to the need to control far-flung military empires
-The Iron Age gave birth to the national standing army based on citizen service and preceded the same practice by Napoleon and
also gave birth to the need for professionalization of military establishments due to the constant flow of conscripts.

This military revolution made itself felt in a number of key areas of military development, all of which had the cumulative effect
of changing the nature, scope, and scale of war.

Among the more important military developments of the Iron Age were changes in
(1) the size of armies,
(2) logistics and transport,
(3) strategic and tactical mobility,
(4) siegecraft and artillery,
(5) staff organization,
(6) military training. ..In almost every one of these military capabilities the armies of the Iron Age reached a level of development that was not
surpassed until the Age of Napoleon. In still others, it required the invention of mechanical weapons and powerful machines of the present age
to surpass the level of operational ability demonstrated by the ancients.

Actually, no. The biggest reason oil exists is that it took a long time before bacteria developed that could digest/ decompose lignin. Without those bacteria, nothing could break down trees.

Good thing that happened, too, because if bacteria did not break down dead trees as they do now, not only would CO2 have been sequestered by shellfish in the oceans into massive chalk formations as they do now, trees would have also permanently sequestered carbon. The world already came close to running out of CO2 to sustain plant life as it is.

i liked your synopsis of materials, and their development and the impact it has and is having on human society.

new developments will keep coming as the human brain can function and interact w/it's environment.

the solar revoution, long time coming, slow getting started, and expensive still putters & sputters along. my interest is fusion energy or harnessing the sun, so to speak. maybe we'll get there, maybe we won't.

some see a "low-energy" future for mankind, but from my casual observations i don't see where mankind in the aggregate is much interested in "low-energy." the magnet rails for train locomotion holds promise, but the price is a limiting factor.

Could it be that these played out fields are being filled from nearby untapped deposits now seeping in to them due to various geo forces rather than'new' oil being rapidly created? If you empty a deposit it creates space. Wouldn't that space want to be filled by something coming from a greater pressure?

Crazy thinking?

When was the last Giant oil field discovered?
Recovery methods have improved and the heave been used on old fields, but that doesn't indicate oil is being made. It's si.ply means are ability to recover what bis there has improved with technology.

Google says a giant field has 500 million barrels of recoverable oil.

On March 10th of this year Repsol and Armstrong Energy announced the discovery of field in Alaska which they estimate has 1.2 billion bbls in reserves.

In October of last year Caelus Energy reported the discovery of a field in Alaska which they estimate has 6 billion bbls in reserves.

While not an official discovery because the results of test wells are secret, ANWR is estimated to hold 10 billion bbls.

Those are conventional fields.

How about this one.......
http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/17/us/midland-texas-mammoth-oil-discovery/


Mammoth Texas oil discovery biggest ever in USA

(CNN)Geologists say a new survey shows an oilfield in west Texas dwarfs others found so far in the United States, according to the US Geological Survey.

The Midland Basin of the Wolfcamp Shale area in the Permian Basin is now estimated to have 20 billion barrels of oil and 1.6 billion barrels of natural gas, according to a new assessment by the USGS.
That makes it three times larger than the assessment of the oil in the mammoth Bakken formation in North Dakota.
The estimate would make the oilfield, which encompasses the cities of Lubbock and Midland -- 118 miles apart -- the largest "continuous oil" discovery in the United States, according to the USGS.
"This oil has been known there for a long time -- our task is to estimate what we think the volume of recoverable oil is," assessment team member Chris Schenk told CNN-affiliate KWES Wednesday.
The term "continuous oil" refers to unconventional formations like shale, in which the oil exists throughout the formation and not in discrete pools. The USGS estimates how much oil is considered to be undiscovered but technically recoverable.
"Even in areas that have produced billions of barrels of oil, there is still the potential to find billions more," Walter Guidroz, coordinator for the USGS Energy Resources Program said in a statement. "Changes in technology and industry practices can have significant effects on what resources are technically recoverable, and that's why we continue to perform resource assessments throughout the United States and the world."

CNN Explains: Fracking 03:31
Oil has been produced in the Wolfcamp area since the 1980s by traditional vertical wells -- but now companies are using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to tap the continuous oil reserve. More than 3,000 horizontal wells are currently operating, according to the USGS.
Morris Burns, a former president of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association, told KWES the low price of oil -- currently around $46 a barrel -- means the oil will sit underground for the foreseeable future.
"We are picking up a few rigs every now and then but we won't see it really take off until we (get) that price in the $60 to $65 range," Burns told the station.
"When we talk about that many millions of barrels of oil in the ground, that doesn't mean we can recover it all. We recover in the neighborhood of 50 to 60 percent," Burns said.
Future of fracking amid low oil prices

Future of fracking amid low oil prices 02:04
Last spring, CNN reported that "fracking" now accounted for more than half of all U.S. oil output. Back in 2000, there were just 23,000 fracking wells pumping about 102,000 barrels of oil a day. Last March there were 300,000 fracking wells, churning out 4.3 million barrels per day.
The fracking production, led by Permian Basin, Bakken formation and Eagle Ford, also in Texas, caused oil prices to tumble -- making the $100 barrel ancient history -- to as low as $25 a barrel early this year.
CNN's Azadeh Ansari contributed to this report.

And yet another huge find.......

Apache CEO Crashes Permian Party With ‘Giant Onion’ Oil Find
by Alex Nussbaum and Joe Carroll
September 7, 2016, 7:36 AM CDT September 7, 2016, 11:01 PM CDT
Driller sees 75 trillion cubic feet gas, 3 billion oil barrels
Texas Alpine High field still faces infrastructure challenges


https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...lion-barrel-field-in-texas-shale-country

This is the field that SD paid protesters are at the set up camp, waiting.

Where ever it comes from crude is falling right now like lead ball on greased tin roof !!! drop baby drop ``

But even if the price goes up to 65-70 per barrel,they might run out of sand to frac the wells with.

Better get that trip to the beach over with.

Hope we never see 50$ again!!!!!!

Oil needs to be at $60+ to create an atmosphere for world stability. Low oil is the reason the Middle East has inordinate say in world affairs, and that is not a good thing.

The Saudi Ghawar field is capable of PUMPING 5 million barrels per day and it's in decline given it was discovered in the late 40's. IT'S original estimated reserves where over 100 billion barrels and it's pumped 70+ billion barrels as of present.
The fields listed in this thread are really small potatoes.