Courtesy Schlumberger . Oil can flow through porous rock like this. Drillers love it. Image courtesy of the United States Department of Energy . Offshore platforms are even more expensive.
Most exploratory holes are dry.
When you finish exploiting an oilfield, a lot of oil remains underground where it can't be economically recovered. Hearing the Earth One of the best ways to learn about conditions underground is to bang on the Earth. The data are stuffed into computers that then draw a picture that makes sense to the human eye. Although helpful, these maps had as little depth as a computer screen. A decade ago, 3-D seismic started becoming as popular in the oil patch as mammoth mergers are today.