I spent much of my professional life in the oil business - including steam floods, and a variety of enhanced oil recovery operations. The way you described the geology - the types of oil wells- the method of fracking wells....was the best summary I have seen. Very well done.
Thanks. I guess my sister taught me well. She's a petroleum Geologist in Bakersfield. She spent a number of years at Getty before Texaco bought them.
Getty's people were experts in secondary recovery when Texaco took over. My sister told me a story of a Texaco rep telling them about the "new" secondary recovery techniques they were pioneering in Texas. After the presentation, one of the engineers pointed out that they had been doing all those things and more in California for 20 years. The two corporate cultures did not mesh well.
I think much of the pipes and pumps of the Houston infrastructure will be just fine after the flooding. What will be distracting is that the workers can't get to the pump switches - partially because they have a house/family that demands their attention more than their employers business. The recovery effort to return neighborhoods to functioning sewers and clean water and reliable power - should take priority over restarting the refineries and pipelines. The sooner the roads are cleared, and drywall is piled in the front of residences, the sooner professionals can get to the big petro complexes and do the start up. and the sooner the petro complexes start, the less Wall Street gamblers will make - so there is an incentive to hype the mechanical issues over the human issues.
True. To run any modern industrial concern requires a lot of infrastructure beyond just the stuff that's easily seen. To replace equipment that was damaged, the parts need to be brought in by road most of the time, unless the company wants to spring for a helicopter. If the roads are washed out, the trucks can't get in.
Workers need places to live, food to eat, schools for their kids, etc. If the workers are worried about their own lives, they aren't going to be concentrating on their work. Even if the company sets up temporary trailer parks, schools, and hot meal service for their employees, the overall infrastructure of the surrounding area is so badly damaged, work will be slowed down by shortages of everything. Even if the company wanted to spring for a helicopter to fly in supplies, that's impossible if all the helicopters in the area are occupied with other things.
Back in the 70s and 80s a British journalist named James Burke did some programs for the BBC and PBS. He later did a couple of series for The Learning Channel in the US. In his late 70s series Connections he did an episode on what would happen if the tech of the modern world stopped.
He examined how to survive if you lived in a major city like New York and you had to get out along with everyone else because there was no power, no food, and no water. He cataloged a string of miracles that would have to occur just to get to a farm that was in working order. And then he asked the question, "would you know how to grow food if you did get here?"
He went on to talk about the northeast blackout of 1965 and how New York went from a metropolis to a trap. The power was off overnight. The damage to Houston is different, but it's longer lasting.
Oil companies are masters at doing business in remote places. They have developed oil projects in the frozen areas of northern Alaska, the jungles of Borneo, off shore in many places around the world, etc. But first off that's oil production, most refineries are in cities or near them, and trying to get many refineries back online at the same time in an urban area that is also out of commission is a tough task.
It may all be back in record time. We can achieve amazing feats of infrastructure repair when we put our minds to it. But it won't be easy.