Oil drilling is an important part of the world economy. It’s been around for a long time. Despite the wishes of many alternative energy proponents, it will likely be around for a long time in the future.
The first known oil drilling took place in Chinese oil wells in 347 AD. They only reached about 800 feet deep. The drilling was done with bits attached to bamboo poles. The resulting oil was used to evaporate salt water, brine, to produce plain salt. By the 900’s AD, bamboo pipelines connected the oil wells directly to salt springs. Many writings from the time talk about heating and lighting homes with natural gas.
Oil drilling was prominent in Asia and the middle east. The Japanese called petroleum burning water. The streets of Baghdad were paved with tar in the 8th century. Persians used kerosene lamps, distilled from petroleum. It all depended on oil.
Marco Polo wrote about oil drilling in Azerbaijan. He visited the area in 1264. He related seeing oil being carried away by the ship load. In fact, he said he saw hundreds of ships at a time, carrying away petroleum. He described abundant fountains of oil.
Early oil drilling was percussive. That means that cable tools were hammered into the ground. The process was replaced by rotary drilling that could reach much greater depths. In fact a Russian bore hole, called the Kola Superdeep Borehole, sought to drill as deeply as possible with a rotary drill. It reach 38,000 feet into the Earth.
The Kola project, related to oil drilling, has also been the subject of a legend. The claim is that the hole reached 9 miles before hitting a cavity. Scientists decided to investigate. They lowered a microphone into the cavity. It recorded the screams of the damned coming from the 2000 degree heat. In reality the scientists had found temperatures around 360 degrees F, and some geographic anomalies. But they hadn’t found hell.
This oil drilling hell legend has been repeated online and in other media. Many tabloids ran the story complete with pictures. Sound files appeared on the Internet. The Christian network TBN broadcast the sound files claiming hell had been proven. It all stemmed from a deliberate mistranslation of a Norwegian article. Even TBN knew it was fake, but they decided to run the story.
Now oil drilling is pretty common place. There are offshore drill sites producing millions of barrels of oil each day. Maybe the devil deserves a cut.
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