Over the summer, I have been working on my action plan, which was to work alongside engineers and geologists at Riliance Well Services. This summer, I participated in some of the jobs that needed to be done while going through the processes of oil drilling. First, they needed to make lines of pipe through the ground to transport oil, gas, and electricity from one place to another. First, a 500 foot trence was dug by a tractor. We dragged all three pipes through the trench and after making sure that none of the pipes crossed each other, the trench was filled so that the pipes would be underground. Another day, I was there for a process of oil drilling called fracking. I don't quite understand this completely yet, but this is part of my research and I plan to learn more about this through my interview. In this process, they used three different trucks, A blender truck, a pump truck, and a sand truck. What happened in this part was:
The sand is simply poured out of the sand truck into a tub in the pump truck, which goes into a tank into the pump truck. In this tank, sand and water are mixed together, which is then pumped into the blender truch which puts them together and sends them down into the hole. I found out that after this they are pumped into the hole to put pressure on the rocks underground to force the oil out. Throughout this process, the geologist and engineer are in another vehicle with very complicated equipment and computers supervising what is going on. They look at the water pressure and tell others what to do accordingly via radio. Through my action, I have learned a lot about what is done to drill oil and found that this is very complex and hard to understand at times.