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How pumpjacks, oil drilling and fracking work: there is no lake of oil underground, it's soaked into solid rock. The oil sits in pores too small to see. Under West Texas it's the Wolfcamp shale, so tight the oil barely moves. In 2023, about 64% of US crude came from tight rock like this. A rig spins steel pipe with a bit on the end. Mud pumped down cools the bit, lifts the cuttings and holds back pressure that could cause a blowout. Casing and cement line the hole; Texas Rule 13 requires it to protect groundwater. Near the shale it turns sideways, about two miles on average in the Permian. A gun shoots small holes through the casing. Then fracking: trucks pump fluid into the rock for hours until it cracks. The fluid is usually 98 to 99% water and sand, up to about 16 million gallons a well. Sand props the cracks open so the oil can seep in. At first, pressure pushes the oil up alone. When that fades, a pumpjack can take over: a motor turns weighted cranks, the beam rocks, and the horse head lifts rods to a pump near the bottom, where two ball valves take turns letting oil in and lifting it. Salty water comes up too, at nearly every well. In a 2017 survey of states, about 92% went back underground, 48% for disposal. In Oklahoma, the USGS links only 1 to 2% of earthquakes to fracking; wastewater disposal caused most of the recent rise. Send this to the friend who thinks there's a lake of oil under Texas. Sources: SPE Energy4me. EIA: Energy Explained, tight oil FAQ, Today in Energy 2016 and 2026. USGS: Fact Sheet 2016-3092, water FAQ, induced earthquakes. Oklahoma Geological Survey. OSHA Oil and Gas eTool. Texas Railroad Commission, Rule 13. FracFocus. US Patents 6,746,221 and 5,472,326. Wikipedia, Pumpjack. NIST SP 811. J. Veil, GWPC 2019. Photos: pumpjack, Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress. Drilling rig, Allan D. Hasty, CC BY-SA 3.0. Drill bit, Geolina163, CC BY-SA 3.0. Shale core, James St. John, CC BY 2.0. Perforating guns and frac sand, William L. Cunningham, USGS. Frac site and disposal facility, USGS. Sucker rods, Robert Yarnall Richie, DeGolyer Library, SMU. Wellhead, Tim Evanson, CC BY-SA 2.0. The CC photos are via Wikimedia Commons.

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