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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday May 05 2020, @07:26AM   Printer-friendly

Oil Wells Done Rube-Goldberg Style: Flatrods And Jerk Lines:

The news is full of the record low oil price due to the COVID-19-related drop in demand. The benchmark Brent crude dipped below $20 a barrel, while West Texas intermediate entered negative pricing. We've all become oil market watchers overnight, and for some of us that's led down a rabbit hole of browsing to learn a bit about how oil is extracted.

Many of us will have seen offshore oil platforms or nodding pumpjacks, but how many of us outside the industry have much more than a very superficial knowledge of it? Of all the various technologies to provide enlightenment of the curious technologist there's one curious survivor from the earliest days of the industry that is definitely worth investigation, the jerk line oil well pump. This is a means of powering a reciprocating pump in an oil well not through an individual engine or motor as in the pump jacks, but in a system of rods transmitting power over long distances from a central location by means of reciprocating motion. It's gloriously simple, which has probably contributed to its survival in a few small-scale oil fields over a century and a half after its invention.


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 05 2020, @02:11PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 05 2020, @02:11PM (#990679) Journal

    If you want "The price is whatever the customer is willing to pay"

    Very few industries have that. You need a combination of monopoly and very high inelasticity. Oil doesn't have either.