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Let's Go For Black Gold #2 Trivia Quiz

This is the second in a series of general knowledge questions about the oil business. Have fun!

A multiple-choice quiz by gorgeman. Estimated time: 5 mins.

Author
gorgeman

Time
5 mins

Type
Multiple Choice

Quiz #
341,711

Updated
Dec 03 21

# Qns
10

Difficulty
Average

Avg Score
6 / 10

Plays
283

One at a Time - Single Page - Timed Game

Question 1 of 10

1. You are drilling your first oil well and the driller asks you "How deep do you want your rat-hole to be?" What is he asking you about? Hint

You both raise rats and are comparing notes about build rat habitat.

How deep do you want the hole next to the rig floor to be?

Fire him! He's obviously drunk, he's supposed to be thinking about oil, not rats!

How deep below the zone to be produced do you want the well to be drilled?

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Question 2 of 10

2. You really want to drill this well perfectly because it is your first in an old field and you want to try out an idea you've had. Your formation has a bottom hole pressure of about 200 psi and you propose to complete your well at 1,000 feet deep. You would like not to contaminate the reservior with your drilling fluid. What type of completion should you be thinking about to protect the reservoir? Hint

Increasing your mud weight

An overbalanced completion

An underbalanced completion

Drilling in very fast

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Question 3 of 10

3. The father of a famous eccentric became famous for establishing a tool company which made a revolutionary new kind of drill bit having three rotating cones. This bit was called what? Hint

The Mega-Muncher

The Tri-Conic Bit

The Hughes Rotary Bit

The Rolling Fishtail

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Question 4 of 10

4. The Hughes Tool Company, inventors of the Hughes Tri-Cone drillbit, had a unique business model in the market place. If you wanted to use their revolutionary drill bit, how could you get one? Hint

You had to rent it

Agree to use only their drill bits and no others

Order directly from Hughes Tool

Win it in a poker game

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Question 5 of 10

5. You are interested in old oilfields because they were discovered long ago and were not very efficient, leaving much of the original oil still in place. At the end of Secondary Recovery, such as waterfloods, as much as 66% of the oil remains in the ground. If you want to take the next step you might want to go to Tertiary Recovery methods.

Which of these is not a Tertiary Recovery method? Hint

Surfactants

Microbes

Polymers

Mining

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Question 6 of 10

6. Your geologist is a Good Ol' Boy who is interested in your project and the fact that you want bring some new technology to the field. He suggests that you core the well as you drill it so he can study the formation. Calling you from the core lab he says, "Boy, you got some really good K here!" What does he mean by that? Hint

You have excellent permeability so fluids will move easily in the reservior

You have a vuggy karst which can hold a lot of oil

You have given him some of your cereal and he likes it

You have a lot of pay zone and good oil saturation

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Question 7 of 10

7. Back in the early 1900s, many of the oilfields discovered in the southern United States were such prolific producers and competitive drilling so intense that the production overwhelmed the capacity to take that oil away to market. Sometimes oil was stored in hastily constructed lakes. Men could be seen rowing around in these lakes of oil.

What were they officially doing? Hint

Stealing the oil

There was so much oil stored in this manner this was how they had to commute to work

Discouraging waterfowl from landing

Fishing for Oil Carp

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Question 8 of 10

8. You have just bought an oil and gas lease and have found some old oil wells on your lease. After some research you find out that one of your wells is "fractured". What does this mean? Hint

High pressure fluid and proppant was pumped down the well to boost the flow rate

The well is a dual completion and production is split (or fractured) among two zones

The casing is broken, ie, "fractured"

The cement bond between the casing and reservior is fractured

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Question 9 of 10

9. Which of the following is generally true of the new oil discoveries being made? Hint

The oil is harder to find

The oil is more expensive to refine

The oil is more expensive to explore for and produce

All of these

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Question 10 of 10

10. BP's blowout on the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 spilled more oil than naturally seeps into the navigable waters surrounding the US in a typical year.

True

False

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Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. You are drilling your first oil well and the driller asks you "How deep do you want your rat-hole to be?" What is he asking you about?

Answer: How deep below the zone to be produced do you want the well to be drilled?

The hole next to the rig floor is called the "mouse hole" and is what the driller loads the next piece of drill stem into to facillitate lifting it up to attach to the drill stem already in the wellbore.

The rat hole is that portion of the drilled hole that extends down lower than the zone to be produced, typically to allow room for tools to work and to collect any debris that may enter the wellbore from the formation.

Answer: An underbalanced completion

If the wellbore is filled with fluid it will show the reservior an overpressure of more than 350 psi if the fluid was fresh water or very light mud. You want to avoid having this pressure cram mud and fluid out into the reservior because it might damage the formation. So, you want to minimize the hydrostatic overburden as you drill in and so decide to drill down just to the cap (the rock at the top of the reservior that "seals it"), set pipe and then perhaps drill in the last few feet using compressed air to remove the cuttings from the well.

Having less or no fluid in the wellbore when the productive interval is penetrated will allow fluids to flow from the reservior into the wellbore, not the reverse.

3. The father of a famous eccentric became famous for establishing a tool company which made a revolutionary new kind of drill bit having three rotating cones. This bit was called what?

Answer: The Hughes Rotary Bit

Howard Hughes's father established the Hughes Tool Company and their rotary bit provided much faster penetration rates than the other drill bits available at the time.

4. The Hughes Tool Company, inventors of the Hughes Tri-Cone drillbit, had a unique business model in the market place. If you wanted to use their revolutionary drill bit, how could you get one?

Answer: You had to rent it

You had to rent their bit, returning it at the end of the job for reconditioning and re-rental. Hughes patents on this design ran until 1951.

Answer: Mining

Surfactants and polymers can be used separately or in combination. Microbes are also employed to generate surfactants in situ (in the ground) to lower the surface tension in the reservoir to allow the fluids to move more easily.

Answer: You have excellent permeability so fluids will move easily in the reservior

"K" is shorthand for permeability - the measure of the amount of mechanical energy required to move fluids through a porous media. The higher the permeability the better the fluid flow.

Answer: Discouraging waterfowl from landing

There are a number of historic photos showing drilling rigs in southern Arkansas, especially around Smackover, totally surrounded by lakes of oil. This region was in a major migratory waterfowl flyway and the men in boats were used to scare the waterfowl away.

That was not a job I'd want to have!

8. You have just bought an oil and gas lease and have found some old oil wells on your lease. After some research you find out that one of your wells is "fractured". What does this mean?

Answer: High pressure fluid and proppant was pumped down the well to boost the flow rate

Fracturing, (or "frac'ing") is increasingly common as exploration moves to harder to exploit, tighter (less permeable) reserviors.

9. Which of the following is generally true of the new oil discoveries being made?

Answer: All of these

There are several truisms in the oil business: Among these are "Nobody saves their cheapest oil for last" and "Nobody saves their best for last".

10. BP's blowout on the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 spilled more oil than naturally seeps into the navigable waters surrounding the US in a typical year.

Answer: False

Many discoveries were made by exploring around natural oil and gas seeps. Among these were major coastal fields in California, the Caddo Pine Island Field in Louisiana (where a line of gas bubbles in Caddo Lake was ignited to delineate a fault) and in the Middle East.

Source: Author gorgeman

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