Not just alt en, but the whole 9 yards. Like understanding laws of thermodynamics, etc.
Here's how the actual extraction process works, sorta...
I drive in to town and buy myself 2 drinks; a double mocha (light sweet crude)and a raspberry shake (medium and heavy crude). The last 2 miles home is a dirt road, severely impacted by the rains. A few potholes big enuf to swallow cars, and lots of small ones which you can't avoid. Consequently, some mocha splashes out, despite the fact that I am using the best cap my mocha lady can find. Sort of like the tar pits B4 we started extracting oil, but more liquid,eh?
When I get home, I take the top off my mocha and jam a straw into it. The whipped cream and some mocha squirt all over the place; some up the straw, some just over the edge. (The gushers you see in oil movies). Now I start to suck up my brew. It takes me a little energy to run my sucking muscles. And it's clean brew; no grounds, no chunks of cocoa. But now, my daughter comes over,and wants some coffee, so she sticks in a straw, a little longer than mine ,and she starts drinking. She gets a few grounds, which she spits out, taking some energy for her spitting muscles. And we notice that the mocha is dropping, so both of us start sucking faster. Uh, oh; middle son comes over with his lady; 4 straws, running out of coffee. Everybody sucking faster, using more energy for their sucking muscles, spitting out more grounds using more spitting energy.
Whoops, mocha gone, open the shake. 4 straws in, but the shake is cold, and nothing splashes out; no gushers. Well, damn, eldest son, his lady, and my grand-daughter just showed up.
"Somebody check the mocha; see if it has refilled itself".
No such luck; 7 straws in the shake.
We are sucking harder now, cuz shakes don't flow as smoothly as coffee. And it has seeds. Yucch. (sulfur, other impurities). We are sitting out seeds like crazy, using lots of spit muscle energy, cuz we can't swallow the seeds (cuz wacko environmentalist hippies like me managed to pass laws saying we had to burn fuel in such a way that we didn't pollute. I'll cheerfully take credit for whatever extra cost that turns out to be).
This stuff is thick; suck faster, spit faster, get yer share B4 it's all gone. Uh, oh, Eric and Shelly just showed up with Hunter. 10 straws, eh? This ain't good. And it's thick, too.
"Hunter, don't suck. Wouldn't you like to blow bubbles in the shake? All kids do, eh?"
Good lad; we are getting more up our straw now, and Hunter ain't getting nuttin' . But he's putting out lots of energy to blow those bubbles, and we are getting lots of air in our straws. Cuz the shake is cold, we use body energy heat to warm it up in our bellies. Because it has air, we get less/suck.
(In the oil world, the air is usually water, but it can be nat gas or CO2. Takes energy to separate out the oil. It's called "water cut", the amount of water mixed with the oil.
In Saudi Arabia, it's 7 gallons/ gal of oil; in west Texas, it's now 99 gals of water).
OK, now we are getting desperate, cuz we all want our shake, and we can see it dropping, and then the Rat gets another ideer. I pull out my straw, find a needle, punch a bunch of holes in the straw, bend it at 90 degrees, and stick it back in. Boy, I'm sucking like crazy, now; getting a lot more than those fools. (Horizontal drilling).
(This is primary, secondary, and tertiary recovery technology. There is no 4th gen tech out there; they haven't developed better extraction methods in 10 years, not from lack of trying, nor lack of imagination.)
Finally, with 9 sucking, and one blowing bubbles, it's time to say, "Stop blowing, Hunter. Spoons, everybody, dig in."
You start using your "dig yer spoon in the ice cream and bring it to your mouth" muscles and their energy.
Whoops, nothing left in the glass.
"Quick, Skyler, see if the mocha has refilled". |
