Digging Deep

Ummm, lemme get this straight...

I drill holes in the ground and extract oil.

Then I drill bigger holes in the ground and put it back.

Then I pump the same oil out out of the ground again and...

I think I don't get it.

Hooker

Three distinct phases of operation, separated by capabilities and needs into fairly widely dispersed time windows.

Phase one - Get it out of the ground, as crude

Phase two - Store it somewhere, till it's needed, either for processing to fuel, or as already processed fuel (probably both, in this case)

Phase three - Provide it for use.

The holes they are making are for Phase two.

Unless that was a rhetorical question. In which case, forgive me. I tend to take applied science and technology too literally, sometimes.

Sorry, Micah, it was written somewhat tongue in cheek.

I'm just amazed that, it seems to me, the distribution system is so inefficient that we have to store huge amounts of oil rather than transporting it directly to the refineries. Why not just leave it in the ground in the first place??

Of course, if it was to be used as a national emergency reserve, I could better understand it. Knowing human nature, though, and with a bow to conspiracy theorists, I would think this large storage might be used for price manipulation.

But that's just me.

Hooker

Well, you last point is certainly well taken, and yep, I think it is a valid consideration, also. OTOH, the storage depot is also a very good strategic target for one of the newer deep-strike smart bombs, or kinetic devices, which are designed to penetrate deep into rock before blowing, or hit so hard and fast that even a dumb rock at that speed causes near quake conditions.

Crack the storage domes and not much else happens with the oil stored there. It leaks, it gets contaminated, it gets isolated by the debris around it. Any of these is kind of a

"dog in the manger" approach, but it would certainly stifle price manipulation.

I'd be more worried about the effect a well planned and executed terrorist strike might have on the supply system. And that, too, if it didn't cause massive contamination or leakage, would certainly lock up the supplies for a long time.

But as far as Point-of-Delivery instead of storage goes, don't we have a Strategic Reserve? Or at least, DIDN'T we have a Strategic Reserve?

And it's a lot more expensive to pump small amounts many times than it is to pump big amounts once the well is open. And the engineering involved in storage is an up-front cost which, after you've paid it, goes back to being money in the bank. So it probably DID make sense to spend what it takes to complete the storage (And whatever else it will be useful for. Who knows with Governments?) now and deliver the product for refinement later, when it is closer to projected need date.

Yeah, we did/do have an underground strategic reserve, supposedly only to be used for national emergencies. Unfortunately, politicians tend to use it to attempt to absorb price spikes, as Obama did recently. Well, they say it's to stabilize prices but we all know that it's to score political points.

Speaking of serendipity. I just finished reading a sci-fi story with a foundation close to what you write about. Seems the Russians "helped" the Arabs safeguard their wells by installing dirty nukes in many of the wells. It was supposed to be a deterrent to keep the West from invading by threatening to detonate the nukes to make the oil and wells unusable. However, the Russians, in their usual devious style , hid remote detonators in the nukes and set them off. This made the Russians the biggest oil producer in the world.

There's a lot more to the story, including power generating satellites beaming microwave energy to ground power stations but I'll not say more. Don't wanna spoil the story for anyone who comes across it. It appeared in Analog Science Fiction Mag as a serial.

Hooker