I thought the in class discussion was very interesting, and brought up some points I had never thought about before. For example, whether violence with drilling is because of the product, or a result of already being in war. I was impressed by the mechanics of the Chinese inventions, and their ability to drill for salt. The Chinese drill seemed very high-tech for the time period, and for the equipment they had on hand.

I think drilling is the turning point in human history when we switched from living off the land to robbing it of its natural resources. The invention of the drilling lead to gas powered chain saws, wood chippers, and logging companies. Also it leads to mineral mining and many more factories and such “technological advances”. This is my own theory that supports the idea that the oil pump was one of the worst things to happen to human culture. What would we use now if we never discovered petroleum? Would we have solar power cars and peace in the Middle East? These are the real questions I would like to hear raised in discution.

Drilling can be a very controversial subject with so much going on in the economies around the world today, as well as the environment. However, I would agree that the invention of drilling is one of the most influential advances the world has ever seen. Oil has provided a natural resource that basically runs nations today, but at the same time it is harming the environment. I know of a method known as dredging which kills plant life on the ocean floor, and burning oil releases CO2, adding to the hole in the ozone layer.

Oil also has a controversy-ridden political background. Many problems in the Middle East have arisen as a result to their abundance in oil and it's even been suggested that the war in Iraq is a method to attempt to gain control of Iraq's oil fields. The oil industry is very lucrative and has provided numerous jobs to people, but it's waging an internal battle with political and environmental activist groups.

When oil drilling was first invented, these political and environmental issues were not taken into consideration because they have only recently developed as a result to changing values and economies of the world. In recent years, the oil industry could be compared to the grain industry, providing valuable, abundant resources with few strings attached in the way of controversy. However, today oil is a much more controversial subject, and the groups which it attracts are less supportive of its positive qualities. Corporate ownership of drilling companies also strains the industry as far as jobs and the result on the economy are concerned. I can see environmental or political activist groups being more forgiving to a privately owned company that's making a living off of the oil rather than a corporation that is using the resource to stockpile money and is causing problems with foreign nations.

Kristen Cone

I do not believe that the effectiveness of drilling has diresctly led to violence and global warming. The effectiveness of drilling has nothing to do with either of these. How a government goes about selling a product or how a product is used once purchased has nothing to do with the current state of technology within an industry. There is an association of violence with oil. This misconception only exists because of the history of bad relations between the United States and the Middle East. Oil being produced in Alaska or Texas does not retained the this realtionship with violence. Though thhe burning of petrolium contributes to global warming, it is not the major source. The buring of coal releases more carbon dioxide than petrolum does. Overall, neither of these were a result of the effectiveness of drilling.

I couldn't open the first link either. weird. Other than the info provided, i don't really know that much about the drilling industry. I think it has caused a lot of political problems though. Because it is such a great source of income, it has led to violence in the middle east, and political controversies about drilling in America. About the consequences of becoming more efficient in drilling, is it possible to become so efficient we use up all the resources? Then where would we be without the minerals and gas that rely so much on? I hope to learn a lot in tomorrow discussion.

Lindsey W
ok so i couldnt even open the first link, i don't know wh, but my computer wouldn't open it up. the other sites just comfused me. i dont understand this at all, its a bunch of jibberish right now, but hopefully tomorrows discussion will help turn things around for me. as for the questions (without knowing much about it) i think drilling was one of the top inventions, at least so far. there are so many things that we use the resources for from drilling. drilling itself i don't think is a huge contributer to global warming, just the way that we use the resources we gain from drilling. we gain oil and gas, and we use those in ways that are harmful to the environment. but with regards to violence, i don't think anything turns violent just because of a situation, but because of the people involved. on the surface, it might seem that oil has caused a lot of problems, but to me, its just the people. we fight because our pride or egos have been damaged. there are solutions to everything, violence is not always the answer. people need to stop blaming problems on oil, and start by blaming people...including themselves.

I think the biggest question I have on this subject is why isn’t the world more advanced in oil drilling, and especially oil refining? If the technology has existed for thousands of years why hasn’t it drastically improved? I read an article in Foreign Affairs entitled, “Two Cheers for Expensive Oil” that discussed the limitations of current technologies. According to the article only 35 percent of the oil contained in known oil fields worldwide can be recovered with existing technologies.

The relationship between the oil industry, government, and environmentalists is very convoluted in my opinion. Winston Churchill said, “Safety and certainty in oil lie in variety and variety alone.” As nations become more interdependent for resources, I feel that international relations and diplomacy will have to play a huge role in American government in the future. My feeling on the Middle East is that they have a government problem, and oil is the commodity that makes the authoritarian regimes rich. The governments there exploit their own people, with or without the presence of oil I think this would occur. I don’t know a lot about OPEC, but I do know that the United States doesn’t buy oil from Iran, and I’m pretty sure that Iraq is still no where near producing at maximum capacity. In the future I think that the countries the United States will have to worry about will be Venezuela and Russia (because it has surpassed Saudi Arabia in production output).

As for the issue of global warming, it exists, without doubt and the problem can be attributed to anthropogenic influences as well as natural fluctuations. An engineering professor spoke in one of my classes a few months ago and he explained that Texas is one of the few places that actually imports carbon dioxide. It is pumped into the ground in West Texas to obtain more oil from wells. He said that it might be possible to pump carbon dioxide from the air into existing oil wells to obtain the remaining resources, and then the wells could be capped to prevent the gas from escaping. I found this proposal very interesting.

To start, oil and the drilling has led to much of the violence in the Middle East; however, the drill is definitely in the top ten inventions list, if not at the top. I agree with a lot of ya'll and I agree with many of yours opinions on what the oil controversy is going to do to us and the middle east. Other than that I'm not really sure how to comment on the other questions, but this topic should be very interesting. I love how we are starting to get into really original topics.

Ok so to start off this conversation I can flat out say I don't know much about politics or the depth of violence in the middle east, but I just want to point out a few things from an outsider looking in. I personally feel that drilling has led to violence. I feel that oil in general has led to increased violence and separation of our country in terms of political parties. I distinctly remember listening to a conversation about how Bush is a pyscho for wanting to go into Alaska and use the reserve to obtain more oil - the conversation then continued with "you crazy wacked out liberal...this is why our country is the way it is today...you people care so much about the earth and yadda yadda ya...our country needs oil no matter how we obtain it". I'm not sure how the conversation ended but I realized that this conversation was sort of a microcosm for the general feelings of people in the United States and all around the world. So many fights and wars have been generated or elevated because of oil. It is a resource that is slowly but surely running out and people are not sure what to do about it. Maybe smart people like Johnko can figure something out...

Kathryn Walker

I think that even though the invention was an amazing feat for its time I still think that at least in current society it really does directly correlate to the amount of power a society has. America is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world and is the best at utilizing the technological advances it has made in the consumption and drilling of oil. Our power has been derived from the fact that we have such a direct impact on the importing and exporting of oil worldwide. Honestly though, as far as the specifics of the technology go, I'm not really knowledgable on. I'm really looking forward to your presentation in class so you can bring to light what you're trying to get across with this presentation. I think yours is probably the most original and thought-provoking one we have had so far as a class.

Not being so much into the technical side of drilling, I think I'll dive into the question about drilling's effectiveness related to middle eastern violence. I think technology always has a profound effect on societies, if not the biggest as seen in today's modern societies. Anything from penicillin to the a-bomb. Here's a great quote from the movie Syriana that sums up the Middle East's oil industry.

"Twenty years ago you had the highest Gross National Product in the world, now you're tied with Albania. Your second largest export is secondhand goods, closely followed by dates which you're losing five cents a pound on... You know what the business community thinks of you? They think that a hundred years ago you were living in tents out here in the desert chopping each other's heads off and that's where you'll be in another hundred years..."

So unless the they find some really (and I mean really) efficient means of extracting oil, the middle east will be a lost memory when the world harnesses some new fuel for technology. This is just a brief time in history (say a couple hundred years) where we become addicted to oil. But once it's all gone, we'll spread to some other resource until all of that is consumed and the cycle continues.

Well, I don't know much about drilling, so I really don't know how to answer many of these questions. I think after the discussion, and hearing more about drilling, I might have a better understanding and I'll be able to answer the discussion questions. After looking at the top ten inventions, I would say that the drill was the best, because I don't know what I would put ahead of it. I think in the earlier time period, the product would directly equal influence, since the Chinese came up with the drill, and people are going to try to find better ways to improve it. Whereas, in the present time the product would equal power and dominance, because the people who own these companies that deal with drilling have control. I don't know though, but I tried to answer the questions the best I could.

Bridget Kaiser

This is pretty much the coolest thing we have talked about. My dad owns an oil&gas production company, so i have grown up in the business. I am actually thinking of switching my maor to GEO, and my fiance is a Petroleum Engineering major.
I cannot wait to talk about this. Haha, I actually grew up having a huge drill bit used as a door stopper in my house... anyhoo, This si awesome. So much controversy surrounds this field, and it as so so many pros and so so many cons. It is a really interesting industry to discuss, especially being part of it and seeing the ups and downs.
Something to discuss: there are still a few small companies running without the corporate control. my dad's company is owned solely by him and my mom, meaning that every aspect if the business is controlled by them. Also, they do not do overseas drilling. All of it is in Texas. this brings business to local roughnecks and pipelines and so on... maybe we could talk about the difference between big companies vs. small businesses. If this doesn't fit into your discussion, thats coool, but just a thought. :)
good luck!

Background Info

Ancient China: Around 100 B.C., over 2000 years ago, the Chinese empire sought a way of obtaining one of the most important resources of their time (the resource being salt). To harvest this resource in the most efficient fashion, they created a compression/percussion drill. The simple idea was basically to pound a hole into the earth. Using see-saw like device powered by men, and sometimes oxen, the drill would repeatedly lift and drop a weighted bit attached to bamboo and/or string. As time progressed, the chinese discovered natural gas. With the harnessed power of natural gas, they were able to manufacture metal bits for specific jobs such as retaining brine (salt water) and removing sediment from the bottom of the hole. After all was said and done, the chinese could dig a hole up to several kilometers deep over the period of a few years and had obtained a consistent power source by way of natural gas.

Present Day: Until the 1970's, the idea of compression/percussion drilling was still the method of choice. The stereotypical drill that you might imagine in the plains of Texas during the oil rush operates in a similar fashion. As time has progressed, engineers have used the power of engines to increase the efficiency of drilling. Most drills today use a rotary bit. The rotary bit is what you might think of when you see someone drilling a nail into wood, using the inclined ramp around the outside of the bit to dig into the wood. With oil being one of the most important resources of today, we are continually looking for more sites and ways of improving our drilling methods.

The first link is to a site containing the "10 best inventions of the chinese." The second two are from wikipedia. What i am looking for you to do is to browse through these pages and click on links to related pages to look at the pictures. The background info i gave you should be sufficient. Just get an overall feel for the time periods. Sorry there aren't too many pictures from 100 BC...

http://www.quazen.com/Reference/Education/10-best-inventions-of-the-Anci...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drilling_%28oil%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drilling_rig#by_method_of_rotation

Questions to address:

First off, do you think the drill was the best of the first sites suggested top ten inventions? If not what was the top invention?
Thinking of the products, in which time period do you think the product would directly equal power, dominance, influence etc.?
As far as the "audience," how would the change from a government (chinese) led drilling to a more corporation (present) led drilling industry effect the drill and its market?
What are the consequences of switching to corporate led industry and what are the consequences of becoming more efficient in drilling?
Do you think the effectiveness of drilling has directly led to violence (middle east) and global warming, or is just a small part of a larger issue?
Any other questions you would like me to address are encouraged and any comments for the presentation would be greatly appreciated!