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?

The story of gas(oline)

Have you ever been filling up your car at the gas station and wondered where that smelly liquid comes from? When it costs an arm and a leg to fill up the tank then it’s got to be a long, expensive process, right? Well, I admit that I generally am watching the numbers next to the $ increase rapidly instead of thinking about how gas traveled to get to my car’s tank.

But it is a very important story with impacts to our country’s economy, national security, and energy future. Not to mention the personal impacts when you thought you could make those last 30 miles with the empty light on because, hey, Jeremy did it in Top Gear (go to 8:00 in the video for the real drama).

Watch Part 1 and Part 2.

Alright, back to gasoline. Here is the whole story in picture flowchart form. The very, very beginning is not pictured because black goo turning blacker doesn’t lend to a good picture. (I'm referring to animal and plant material slowly being compressed to create oil.) I start with an image I created because I couldn't find any good ones on Google.

Geophysics combined with geology leads to a well being drilled and oil extracted.

The oil is then taken to a refinery and makes its way toyour local gas station.

OK, so now in more detail. The story of gasoline starts with crude oil (made out of hydrocarbons; crude because it is unrefined) deep in the earth. We extract oil on land and from under the ocean. Let’s focus on the oil taken from beneath the ocean, say in the Gulf of Mexico, a place full of oil. The first step is to find it! This type of treasure hunting involves large ships running different types of surveys. Most likely a seismic survey (sends out vibrations and listens for them to come back) and maybe electromagnetic survey (sends out electrical energy which goes down into the earth and is recorded at a receiver on the seafloor) are run over an area in the ocean.  The data is processed by geophysicists who create a model of the subsurface. Then geophysicists consult with geologists to make sure the model make sense. An oil company then spends millions or billions of dollars to drill down to wear the oil is located (more on that technology in a later post). The oil is extracted and sent to a refinery where it is filtered into gasoline as well as other products like diesel fuel and kerosene. The refining process basically separates the oil by different boiling points with gasoline having a lower boiling point than kerosene or diesel fuel. Finally the gasoline is put into a tanker and delivered to your local gas station. The End.

So what are you actually paying for at the pump? Well, I had the same question and luckily for us the U.S. Energy Information Administration broke it down.

The breakdown of where the money goes for a gallon of gas.

I know this was a long story but it is an important one. This general story of gasoline glossed over some of the important issues behind this controversial energy product but it is a starting place for more detailed posts about some of the processes involved to get oil from below the ocean turned into gasoline for our cars.

I'll still always watch the numbers next to the $ when I fill up my car with gas but now I'll also think about the journey the oil took to get to the gas station and where my money is going.