Food (or bumper sticker) for thought

I walk into school every day. (Yup, you can be jealous.) Twice a day I pass by the cars parked in front of my apartment building. For the past couple of months there has been a car with a bumper sticker that bothers me.

Bumper sticker on a car parked by my building.

It’s not that I don’t like bumper stickers. I have put stickers on all (two) of the cars that I've owned. Right now I have a silver palmetto and moon sticker (think South Carolina flag) on my car. I also had the one shown below (before it fell off somewhere :( ). 

Wag More Bark Less bumper sticker.

If you were driving behind me you would probably assume that I'm from South Carolina and that I'm an animal lover who likes it when people are nice. And you would be right. Bumper stickers tell the people driving behind you what you like, where you live, etc. They remind drivers that the big metal boxes on the roads contain people who have lives. Not to mention the chuckle they give you when you’re stuck at a stoplight. One sticker that you can see all over Golden is shown below. I like it because it's sort of nerdy like most of the people in Golden!

Au (Elemental symbol for gold) representing Golden, CO. 

And I’m not against this person sharing their opinion about drilling with the world. I work in a field that is supported by big oil companies that have drilling project all over the world. My research focuses improving surveys so that drilling can be more successful.

No, I think I’m bothered because this sticker takes a huge issue that is very complex and simplifies it to a black and white fact. I think we all know that the sticker doesn't mean that he or she likes to drilling with his/her power drill or the physical job of drilling out in the field (as we saw here it’s a messy, tough job). The creator of the sticker is from an oil town in Utah and meant it to be a way for people to connect the fuel they put in their car to where it comes from. Check out this article for more information. That's a great thing but I don't think that's the message communicated. I think it is really a sly way to comment on U.S. sources of energy and how they are retrieved like fracking. 

You can't take this sticker literally. For me at least, it brings to mind all the issues connected to drilling and the way the issues are poorly communicated. I mean things like fracking and the BP Macondo well disaster. As a geophysicist, this sticker urges me to say no! We (the oil industry) know drilling is dangerous and risky but we take precautions and try to be safe. We DON'T just blindly LOVE drilling! I wish there was a bumper sticker that could communicate all the risks and dangers of drilling while also stating the benefits in a way that the reader could take their own position. But as I mull over it more, I conclude that no bumper sticker could ever do that (or be small and readable enough to fit on any car) and that it is MY job as a scientist to put out information that assists decision makers. To communicate with the world and help find the best energy solution that fits the public not the industry. 

And so, in the end, I'm glad that bumper sticker is there every day. Even though most days I just want to replace it with some other "I heart" sticker like this.

Much better than "I heart drilling!" Don't you think?

Or a bumper sticker with this saying on it (Get it? Look at the title of the blog!)

Another good saying for a bumper sticker.

Amazing how a 5 minute walk and a bumper sticker bring can make for a long blog post! These are just my initial thoughts and I don't have it all figured out (obviously). So what do you think? What do your bumper stickers say about you? What does "I heart drilling!" mean to you?

Oil drilling: a dirty job

How does working two weeks each month sound? Well if you're working the 9 to 5 job or crazy graduate student hours it might sound like a deal. But the work this kind of  job requires might be a bit beyond what you're willing give. Just look at how tough of a time Mike from Dirty Jobs is having:



Now imagine doing that kind of job on an offshore drilling platform in the middle of the ocean! As we saw in the story of gasoline getting oil to the gas station is an involved process but getting the oil up from deep within the earth is quite the process too. The U.S. imports a large part of our oil from foreign sources (almost 50% in 2010) but we have a large amount of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. This is where offshore drilling platforms are found. In 2006, there were over 4,000 platforms in the gulf according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. An image helps that number hit home.

The 4,000 platforms in the Gulf of Mexico in 2006.

So how do these offshore oil rigs get to the oil? Well, the one video I found that describes the process very clearly is actually for a research vessel trying to drill through Earth's crust which is pretty cool! The process to drill for oil is the same but the drilling stops when the reservoir (big pocket of oil and gas) is reached.



Basically, a vessel or platform positions itself about the location by GPS and then lowers a drill head on a long cable down to the ocean floor. The hole is lined with casing (metal piping) to reinforce it. Once the reservoir is reached then the oil is pumped up and to a holding tank or through a pipeline to shore.

The guys who are out there on the rigs work 2 weeks straight often with 12 hour shifts (they are paid pretty well though). Fortunately the platforms aren't just for business. They usually have a movie theater and gym. This article describes the rig life in more detail. Sleeping in tiny bunks and braving windy weather are just some of the downsides of the job.

The process to reach oil thousands of feet below the ocean isn't easy. It's amazing to me the technology involved to get the precious resource out. As with my brief story of gasoline, there is a lot I'm leaving out so this will fit into a blog post. Read this longer story of the complete oil drilling process over at HowStuffWorks for more information. If you think you can brave the waves, tiny room, and 12 hour days then kudos to you because I definitely couldn't do it!