Interresting to know that Pump jacks are powered by electricity ....a staggering quantity of electricity enough to run 15 milions electric cars for a month in the US....ouch!
Its unsettling - the notion there are 33kwh in a gallon of gas since they ought to subtract all of the energy necessary for creating & extracting & decommissioning well pads, in addition to maintaining all of that - & the rest of the infrastructure .
When I was growing up in the 1950 Oklahoma City, I could hear the diesel/gas (methane?) engines at night as well as the diesel locomotives. But electric motors run many times longer without maintenance, clutch, and starters. So it only made sense to go electric which has terrific torque at low rpm to get everything moving and no clutch ... like today's EVs. Bob Wilson
Oil boreholes once drilled can only be made late-phase productive in this way. Good examples of sunk costs. Petroleum extraction industry has their own ways to make all this look good in accountancy. Fossil burning made industrialization and all benefits therefrom. All went well until it because obvious that increased atmos CO2 looks like a bad deal. Now we are in a muddle, because money is over here whilst environmental sensibility is over there.
I can't criticize what brought us to today's technology. Rather, we have learned enough to do it better even though it will take time. As for those standing in the way of energy advancement, economics and age will solve that problem. For example, at least one coal company has gone bankrupt and Tesla skeptic Bob Lutz is 91.. Bob Wilson
ah yes ..... childhood memories. Living near the Pacific coast I recall the sound of super tankers' offshore horns singing to the onshore lighthouses ... nearing the long beach harbor in order to get ready to pump into the Wilmington refinery .... and that glorious sight of the night time glow - as the Wilmington refinery would start flaring all night - to destroy the most toxic of chemicals. .
