How Rotary Drilling Transformed Oil Exploration

In this episode, we explore the evolution of drilling technology, the impact of petroleum on medical devices, and current geopolitical tensions affecting oil markets. Join us for a deep dive into how innovation and geopolitics shape the energy industry.


Keywords

oil and gas, rotary drilling, petroleum in medicine, geopolitics, energy markets, innovation, drilling technology


Key Topics

History and impact of rotary drilling
Petroleum in medical device manufacturing
Advancements in drone boat technology
Geopolitical tensions in the Middle East
Oil market fluctuations and economic implications

Sound Bites

"Could you make a bullet that you could steer?"
"Oil prices are going to go up with war."
"Petroleum might also be your heartbeat."


Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Episode Overview
01:27 Market Update and Oil Price Trends
07:03 Innovative Drone Boats and Maritime Security
13:00 Smart Bullets and Military Technology
27:30 History and Evolution of Rotary Drilling
33:43 Petroleum in Medical Devices and Healthcare
37:09 Closing Remarks and Future Topics

Resources

Rotary Drilling Overview - https://www.example.com/rotary-drilling-overview
Petroleum in Medical Devices - https://www.example.com/petroleum-medical-devices
Drone Boats in Maritime Security - https://www.example.com/drone-boats-security

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Good morning, everybody. It's July 14th, 2026, and this is Crude Logic.

SPEAKER_00 0:06

We built this land with busted knuckles and called hands. This is crude logic. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 0:16

So all is back in the headlines. As political tensions increase, so do the prices. Before we get started on the rest of the story, let's get a market update.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

All right, guys. So market update for today: West Texas is sitting at 77.78. Brent is at 8298, and natural gas is down to 288. Current U.S. rig count sitting at 581 for the week, which is up one rig from last week.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

Sounds like prices are continuing to go up, which is not a surprise. The uh we've said it before, the Iran thing is just going to give us a roller coaster ride as it relates to market numbers and all that. So it may look like it's going to stay the same for a minute, but I think we're going to see a lot of drops and increases. The markets, as you could just tell, they uh are increasing. It still hasn't got to that point to where it's $100 a barrel. A lot of people are saying that it won't hit that, but I think anything's on the table at this point. And uh the situation in Iran is getting more intense. But one of the coolest things that I saw yesterday, have you seen these Corsair boats, these drone boats that we used to blow up some of their docks? No. It is crazy. So they used a little while back, they used these uh Corsair drone boats that this company in Texas uh has made to rescue a couple of downed pilots. I don't know if you saw that story or not, but they used them to remotely go out into the ocean and recover these helicopter pilots. First time that had ever been done. Now, very quickly, not much time later, they're using these boats. They have videos of them where they're driving these boats straight into ports and blowing up their docks and their port areas. And it's very, very cool and also very, very frightening. They're like little bitty boats or like like a full-size boat. Like it's like a um, I would say like a large recreation boat, maybe one of those, you know, big ones that you like a big wake boat. Okay. It that's that's kind of what they remind me of. But they're you know just all grayed out and they're they cost like a million dollars a pop, but they can hold like a thousand-pound payload, and they just drive them from the water right into the docks. They blew up like three port areas yesterday, I think it was, with these boats.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

I'm fairly confident that we should stop doing this show. Go get some old fiberglass boats for like $2,000 off of Facebook Marketplace, fill them with C4, and see if we can win that contract.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

I got a 1974 outboard here, guys. Which, you know, I I I think you could probably put that kind of technology in boats like that, but whether or not they capsize, I don't know. But uh these boats can go extremely fast too. So I think it's clever, but you know, it uh technology rarely stays within top secret realms. I mean, you know, we had the atom bomb, and we're the first ones to actually successfully do that. And next thing you know, the world's covered in nukes. So uh that that's scary in the sense that you can if we can do it to them, somebody else could get the technology, like China or Russia or North Korea, and send boats into our ports. So my thing is that I just hope that we're thinking about that from a security level to secure, because we are uh independent, we're energy independent. So the there's only like two percent of the oil that comes out of the Strait of Hormuz is used by us. So we're not really relying heavily on the Strait of Hormuz. But if somebody started blowing up our ports or blowing up, you know, our ships that are exporting oil or whatever, I'm just saying it could be dangerous for the country.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

I I can see those boats being useful for rescue missions for sure, because it's above water. I would think that they would just use a torpedo for like something in a dock or a harbor, but I don't know. Maybe they need it. I'm I'm not a military strategist.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

Maybe there's a reason for using the above the water boat, but I mean, yeah, because you can see that coming, but maybe I was gonna say maybe there's not technology for torpedoes, but what's I mean, what's maybe there's uh I don't know. I mean, torpedoes, it seems more plausible that you'd want to send something underground or under the surface of the water so it can't be seen, because if they did have any defense left, which clearly that's proof that they don't, because they show these videos of these boats just kind of slowing down and getting up towards the port and kaboom, it's over. And there's no nobody trying to take them out or anything. So Iran, their capabilities are probably reduced, but if they did have some level of uh identifying that threat and taking it out, that's a waste of a lot of money for no results. So I think you make a good point.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

They're letting these boats dock and then they're detonating. Like do these didn't No, they're just they're driving them into the ports. But like at it at a at a pace, right? They're not just like pulling up like they're some lost sailor.

SPEAKER_02 5:49

The video, uh funny enough, the video looks like that it's slowing down before it gets to the port, before it blows it up. Now it might not be, it might just be how it's it it appears, but it's not zooming in there at the speed of a heat-seeking missile or anything. It's it's if you noticed it coming and identified it, I don't think it's moving too fast to take it out, if you had the capability to take it out. But this drone technology is is getting crazy. I mean, think about this. You know, they have drones now that are tiny, like, you know, whatever. I don't know, maybe the size of your fist. Yeah. Um, you know, what's what keeps technology from developing something that is the size of an insect?

SPEAKER_01 6:35

No, maybe it won't carry explosives, but I saw a video the other day and it was like a you know, a what if kind of video, but they were talking about that the military's already designing something that's like the size of a grasshopper that I'm sure you would see it coming, but it has like a bullet in it and facial recognition software, so they can like tell it this is the guy that you're after, and that drone can find that guy, like land on his forehead, detonate that thing, that bullet, and kill the target.

SPEAKER_02 7:09

So there's I've I don't know if it's real technology or if it's just I heard it somewhere or whatever, but I've heard of smart bullets. I might have saw it on Miami CSI or something, uh you know, whatever. I'm a rerun guy, but I might have seen it on something like that. But if you think about it, could you make a bullet? You got heat-seeking missiles. So could you make a bullet that you could steer from a pistol or a rifle? I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

Maybe if it's if it was like far enough away. The target was far enough away. I mean, if it's like something close up, you know.

SPEAKER_02 7:49

Yeah, like if it's like 20 yards in front of you, good luck steering something that's traveling thousands of feet per second.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

I'm like they're looking into that already. I never really thought about it. Sure.

SPEAKER_02 8:01

Yeah. Yeah. And if anybody can develop it, you know, it's us. But you know, technology gets stolen and all that. So anyway, back to oil and gas markets. Obviously, this is gonna continue to frustrate and fluctuate the markets. And uh anybody who bed buys gas or diesel regularly, it's just something we're gonna have to deal with. It's not gonna be pretty, it's not gonna be fun, but on the same hand, we need to make sure that Iran's dealt with. And I don't think they're dealing with it harshly enough. But I'm not in, I'm not privy to all the intel. So I don't know what the my mentality is. Blow it to hell and call it a day. But what are the geopolitical ramifications from that? Who knows?

SPEAKER_01 8:49

I don't know. I bet the um journalists are probably getting tired of this deal in Iran because it seems like every day, oh we we've got another ceasefire. Truce is on. Oh, somebody bombs somebody, it's off. It's really getting like annoying and hard to keep up with. I saw this morning that Trump has re like initiated the lockdown or whatever of the of the strait and has got U.S. naval vessels escorting ships again and all of that stuff. But 24 hours ago, it was peace talks are resuming and everything's getting better, and you know, yeah, but oil prices are doing okay, so I'll take it.

SPEAKER_02 9:32

Yeah, I mean, they're doing okay for now. It's what what's kind of uh what makes me a little bit nervous is we do have midterms coming up. I think that maybe the administration miscalculated a little in the sense that, okay, we're gonna go in and do this. It's gonna take us two, three, maybe four months, which I don't think we're at the four-month mark yet. We might be getting close, but it's gonna take us three or four months. We're gonna have this squashed and everything's gonna be great by the midterms, and we're gonna crush the midterms. And, you know, historically throughout our country, midterms typically always switch power because that's just the way our politics are. People want to change it out and vote for the opposite party to be in charge. And, you know, I don't know why that always seems to be the case, but it it is pretty consistent throughout our history. We're all pretty dumb as individuals. I think in general, yeah. And I think that AI is making us even dumber. So uh, you know, our it's it's killing a lot of things. And and you know, AI isn't uh as the more people are using it, if you use it regularly, you can start seeing the cracks in it. And yes, it'll get perfected, and yes, AI will learn more, but it's shit in, shit out. And a lot of times you can tell AI to do something, and it'll be in the ballpark, but not necessarily accurate. So just remember everybody, and you're using AI, you may not be getting accurate information. And so I could be a victim of that myself. So an upside of these increased prices is that energy companies um, you know, they're they're expecting higher benefits from higher commodity prices. So some of the uh the revenue reports are looking pretty good, which you know, why this is good for producers and not necessarily good for consumers, but I think it's all kind of relative. It kind of is like this slinky, and you know, every at the points of contraction, you know, everybody's kind of aligned. And then something happens, an event happens, and it stretches out that slinky, and then that slinky has to catch back up with itself. I think it ebbs and flows in a way to where we've seen this our whole life of, you know, okay, well, this event happened, war, so the gas prices go up, and then they come way back down, and then something else happens, energy crisis or whatever. So, in a lot of ways, this is normal, and I don't think that the public as a whole understands it unless they do deep dives into this stuff. Um, the people that do understand it, but people that don't are just thinking, oh, well, like I like we mentioned that the a little while back when Trump told uh oil and gas companies to stop price gouging. Well, I don't know what the productivity is of him saying that, even if it's true publicly. Like he could put pressure behind the scenes on these production companies that they see evidence that they're gouging prices, then they can just put pressure from within and not come out and make those statements. Because it really doesn't matter who protests oil, who thinks, you know, the climate activists and all that doesn't matter that they don't want it around, as we point out every day on this show, that they're everything is made with petroleum, uh, essentially. So you can try to get rid of it, you can want to get rid of it. The bottom line is it's not going anywhere anytime soon. But for the president, whether they like him or not, coming out and saying, uh, quit quit price gouging, then it starts making everybody think, oh, well, we're really getting screwed here. Whereas a lot of people without that statement might just think, well, they're doing some good things, and this is the pain we have to endure in order to make sure that we're safer. But then he comes out and says, quit price gouging, and it makes it seem like and maybe they are price gouging, but Nah, that he has seen the politics of it, I th I think.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

I mean, that's just my opinion. But I keep seeing these little stickers popping up all over gas pumps across, you know, we're on vacation right now and just traveling from one state to the next. There's little stickers on the gas pumps with Trump going, I did that. And I remember that when Biden was in office, that happening. And I think that the majority of people don't have any idea how the industry works or how geopolitical tensions change prices or whatever. It's a cheap win for him to say, oh, stop price gouging and try to put the blame on somebody else. But when you're going to war with Iran, oil prices are going to go up.

SPEAKER_02 14:23

Well, and it opens the door for conspiracy theories. And what's interesting about me bringing up conspiracy theories is that there's go to the Charlie Kirk trial, and there's um a lot, you know, there's a lot of uh conspiracy theorists out there, some extremely famous and well-known, others just trying to take the lack of information and put it together, and then just others just making up things. But what I've noticed is that the mainstream news? Is that what I'm trying to say? Um the mainstream news has been spinning stories and trying to put out information to minimize conspiracy theories, or they're giving conspiracy theories a lot more attention than they used to. Like conspiracy theorists were treated like these fringe people who were crazy in the past. And now, probably because of social media, there's a ton of conspiracy theorists out there. Some of them are just whacked, out of their mind, don't have a clue what they're talking about. Others are taking good information that provokes a lot of thought. And I think it's making the mainstream news industry nervous because it muddies the waters. And so they're trying to get out ahead of conspiracy theories.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

I think that the mainstream news media hasn't reported on news for a couple decades now. So I think that they're I think that it's some of like you said, some of these conspiracy theorists are just crazy. And some of them they come up with like valid, oh, I didn't think of that kind of moments. And it's more entertaining than regular mainstream news. So people are watching it more. And I think that's why they're paying attention now, is because their ratings are dropping and they haven't really been required to report the news for a while now. So they have like one real news segment, and the rest of their shows on mainstream channels are all for entertainment purposes only. So I think they're starting to get into it because they they see that it's but so give me an example though, because I I got off of social media again. I'm doing a little social media strike, and I didn't see I'm only seeing, I guess, the mainstream stuff as I'm scrolling through like Google News, which by the way, I think it's odd, but uh Twitter is now considered a news. Like their branding and and marketing, everything puts them as a social media platform and news network. So their news stories come up in the Google news feed, which they didn't used to. Anyways, I have only seen like um things confirming that the original story that Tyler Robinson killed Charlie Kirk is the only story. I saw an interview with his boyfriend or roommate or whatever that said he was, you know, bragging to him about what he did and was cleaning the house to get his mind off of it and all that stuff. That's the only thing I've seen about the Charlie Kirk interview, which I thought was pretty damning evidence that the kid did it. Um but is there what's going on in social media with it?

SPEAKER_02 17:27

Yeah, and they they're doing this preliminary preliminary trial to see if they if there's enough there to go to trial, and it's gone way in depth, which apparently most preliminary hearings don't go this in depth. And there is uh Erica Kirk and Turning Point USA and others that are really, really pushing to have all the evidence out there to have people be able to see it in the hearing in the court and be able to see it for themselves so they understand the true picture. I believe that he did it. I believe that the facts that we're seeing are true, but it doesn't eliminate, and I don't want to go all conspiracy theory here, but it doesn't eliminate the fact that he may not have acted alone or may have been pushed to do it. Now you would think that he would say, hey, no, no, no, I was this and that, but a lot of dark things happen, and just like the shooter in Butler, Pennsylvania, would that we know hardly anything about, and I where I don't want to make this all about conspiracies, but the the uh it's feasible that these people acted alone and probable, but it's also feasible that there's all uh all the time there's that they didn't. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's people that that uh like the police, they get somebody gets in trouble for drugs and they say, okay, well, we won't charge you with this if you help us catch the bigger guy or whatever, and then they put them in really dangerous situations and have them do really dangerous things that they're not qualified for. And there's a ton of evidence or a ton of stories out there where people have been killed in the process of being uh an informant to law enforcement agencies from state, local, all the way up to federal. They they do these programs. And what if they identify like somebody, they, whoever the mysterious they are that have an agenda to change our government, whether it's a foreign entity or whatever, they go and reach out to this person. Maybe he's done nothing wrong or put himself in a situation. I'm not saying this is the case for that story. I'm just saying it's possible. And they can say, okay, well, we want you to do this and that, or we're gonna, we're gonna hurt your your boyfriend, or we're going to kill your family, or whatever. And if you out us and say anything, we will also do those things. So we want you to go do this. We've slayed out, we've laid out the plan. Here's the stuff, here's how you go do it. Go do it and deal with it. And if you say anything, we're gonna kill your family. I know it's far-fetched.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

I mean, it's not that far-fetched. We're like listening to them talk about how they did this with people uh with MK Ultra in Congress right now. So exactly.

SPEAKER_02 20:24

So none of that is about oil and gas. So sorry if we swayed off topic. So let's just let's kind of bring it back to earth here a little bit, and let's talk about the implementation, the invention, um, and the uh the use or the change to the industry that rotary drilling accomplished. Before rotary drilling, there were cable tool rigs, and this was from 1859 to the early 1900s. Before rotary drilling, wells were drilled using cable tool rigs, also called uh percussion drilling. A heavy steel bit was repeatedly lifted and dropped to crush the rock, which kind of sounds like the uh air drilling or similar to the air drilling thing that we talked about the other day. Part of the problem with using these cable tool rigs was that it was slow. It often only drilled a few feet per day, and that's not really efficient making hole, but not that much. Um, it was difficult to drill deep wells, primarily, I'm assuming, because of the cost of day-to-day operations and the slow drilling. It worked reasonably well in hard rock, but struggled in soft formations like sand, shale. Um, cuttings had to be baled out of the hole manually. So that's a that's a a thing right there. I mean, getting them out of the hole manually. And that would this was the technology used by Edwin Drake in Pennsylvania that we've talked about in previous episodes. The birth of the rotary drilling was from uh Howard Robard Hughes Sr. Most of you probably know him as Howard Hughes. It's often associated with rotary drilling because Sharp Hughes roller cone drill bit was patented in 1909. This made rotary drilling practical, especially in hard rock. However, rotary drilling itself predates Hughes. The first successful rotary drilling systems were developed in the late 1880s and 1890s, particularly in Texas and Louisiana. This is where cable tools struggled in soft gulf formations. So engineers adapted water well drilling technology to oil wells. One of the earliest successful oil wells drilled using rotary methods was the famous spindletop well in Texas. Rotor drilling played a major role in reaching the massive reservoir discovered there in 1901. This launched the Texas oil boom. How does rotary drilling work? Instead of pounding the rock, the drill bit rotates continuously, drill pipe transfers the torque from the rig. Drilling mud, which is the lifeline of the rig, circulates down the pipe. Its purpose is to cool the bit, to carry the cuttings to the surface, and stabilize the well bore. This concept is still used today. Now, how did it change the oil field? Rotary drilling revolutionized oil production by these things. Drilling wells much faster than cable tools, reaching far greater depths, allowing continuous circulation of drilling mud, improving well control and reducing blowout risks, making directional and horizontal drilling possible decades later. This also lowered the drilling costs while increasing efficiency, and it unlocked giant oil fields that were previously inaccessible. Nearly every modern drilling technology from top drives and measurement while drilling rotary steerable systems and extended reach horizontal wells is built on the foundation of rotary drilling. So that is a little bit of a summary of rotary drilling and what it did to change the industry. Let's talk about some of the things or a thing that is made by petroleum.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

All right, so today's topic is heart valves. One of the most lifesaving uses for petroleum is not your car, it's in the operating room. Artificial heart valves, vascular grafts, and many life-saving medical devices are made from high-performance plastics derived from petroleum. These materials are lightweight, durable, and can safely remain inside the human body for years. So petroleum is not just the heartbeat of Chevrolet, it might also be your heartbeat.

SPEAKER_02 24:58

So that is going to do it for us today here at Crude Logic. Thanks once again for checking us out. If you want to see more of what we have coming in the future, make sure and subscribe, like, and follow. You can find us on social media at crude logic show. And you can find us at our website at crudelogic.show. So anyway, check us out tomorrow where we're going to be talking about, you guessed it, more oil field stuff. So until then, remember to stay safe, keep drilling, and it's only logic if it's crude logic. We'll see you tomorrow.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

Four in the morning, coffee black, steel toasted in the new gravel track, hard hat stone boost in the mud, turning diesel in the blood. From the Permian deck to the rock and mountain stores, the rigs stops drilling, we're ready to go. Another twelve ain't nobody gonna do it themselves. We built it. We built this land, we bust them.