Perhaps the most memorable movie scene depicting the oil industry is from the 1956 movie Giant, in which a gushing well sprays James Dean with oil. The oil surging from the well turns Dean’s character from a poor Texas ranch hand into a millionaire. The dramatic image of oil spraying from a well is so deeply imprinted in the public consciousness that it appears even now in TV documentaries on energy. It is a striking but inaccurate portrayal that reinforces the public’s misunderstanding of how one finds oil—drill until it spurts out of the ground. In fact, this approach to finding oil has not been used since the blowout preventer was introduced in the 1930s.
So how does one find oil without producing gushers? One possibility is to examine pulverized rock cuttings for traces of oil. However, accurately determining the depth from which the cuttings originated or how much...
