Looking On The Bright Side of Technology

Significant Milestones in Oil Production Technology

There have been significant changes in technology in the production of oil since its first production as you will read more here. Because of its importance in our lives, it is best if we take a look at the changes that have taken place since it was discovered. Traditionally, people in Mesopotamia used bitumen to make boats and hold earrings, necklaces, and bangles together. The Kings of Egypt used bitumen for the construction of the famous pyramids. These minerals which oozed to the surface freely requiring no extraction equipment led to the discovery of oil.

From this site, you find out that oil was first extracted by digging. At the time, oil was used as medicine and the Chinese also lit their lamps as well as warm their houses using this product. Following the lack of valuable knowledge about oil as read in this site, there many false assumptions about oil fields at the time.

The next advancement in technology came in form of spring poles. This apparatus which was connected to a tree was made popular by the Ruffner brothers with the intention of reaching more salt deeper in the earth. The importance of oil was still not known to people at this time even though they knew it was a multipurpose commodity. With the introduction of steam to power ,the spring pole salt extraction proceeded at higher rates. A Yale chemist Benjamin Silliman discovered more about how oil could be converted into kerosene that is used for lighting lamps. It is at this point that the society became interested in the commodity and commercial drilling began.

From this website, you will read more about how the need for oil increased significantly. The number of oil deposits discovered in the earth increased. During the drilling process there were sediments that obstructed extraction of oil and the need for better machinery came up. As a result, a technique called rotary drilling was developed whose head penetrated the hard rock without the need to remove debris regularly. One event that marked how effectiveness of the rotary drill in the process of oil extraction was observed in Texas when a rig struck a rock resulting into a lot of oil flowing to the surface. Because the world was getting ready for the first war, the need for oil skyrocketed leading to the development of better oil tools as a result of competition. The most successful development for the rotary drill was the ability to dig deeper.

Today, the most common method of extracting oil is the rotary rig. However, they are advanced technologically as they are fitted with digital tracking devices, touchpads and video control to monitor and access the rigs from a fur. From what you have read in this website, you can see that the rigs can do more work than they did in the past. An instance, is the ability of a rig to move on its own as well to extract oil from a number of fields.