Laugh for the Day (or not)

If you work in the oil industry – or know anything at all about it – and are looking for a laugh, you might want to check out this article at a website called The People’s Voice.

The author decries our economy’s continued reliance on fossil fuels, but implies that as long as we’re going to drill for oil, we ought to stop doing it where it costs so dang much money.

Inexplicably, the industry picks the most expensive places on the earth to drill for oil.

He then quotes another apparent genius in the field:

“You really don’t need to know a lot about geology or oil to figure out something is wrong here, why don’t they go back to the old days and drill oil wells onshore?”

I’m sure the chairmen of Exxon, Chevron, and BP are at this very moment slapping their collective foreheads and exclaiming with great vigor, “why didn’t we think of that!? We should just drill where it costs less!”

After reading that, I quickly checked the address bar of my browser to make sure I hadn’t been redirected to The Onion without noticing.

Interestingly, those assertions are the most reasonable things put forth by the author, as he then attributes various natural disasters around the world to the pain caused to Mother Earth by poking holes in her skin. Seriously.

During the various stages of the energy extraction process, the globe of the earth suffers limitless pain as the area where the drilling occurs. It is gradually being depressurized and cooled internally, causing cycles of contsriction [sic], joint-rending cramps, intermittent partial asphyxiation and searing pain as they use large drills to puncture pericardium and into the heart, sometimes as deep as 10,000 feet.

He even provides Bible verses to back up his thesis.

OK, on further review, this isn’t a bit funny.

I shouldn’t be surprised but he can’t even get the basic facts right to support his hypothesis. Drilling often occurs below 10,000 feet, but the deepest wells on record are only six miles deep. Compared to the almost 8,000 mile diameter of the earth, this is barely a pinprick to the skin, much less a penetration to the “pericardium and into the heart.”