If you’re like me & bored with the Oscars, check out this video: Horizontal Drilling Animation.

Wall-E, it’s not. But it is informative, and it concerns a subject that affects us all. If you ever wondered how an oil or gas well is drilled, this will show you.

Horizontal Drilling Animation [OK, they could have picked a punchier title] is designed to give the layperson a decent understanding of the process of drilling a gas well. The particular well in this case is a horizontal well in the Haynesville Shale formation, currently a hot play in North Louisiana.

Natural gas is an almost totally domestic resource (with important imports from Canada). It is exceptionally clean. Today, somewhere around 40% of gas production is from “unconventional” sources, like the Haynesville shale, that virtually no one thought would ever be a potential resource just a generation ago. And 80% of the domestic rig count is pursuing natural gas, not oil.

New technologies, including horizontal drilling and fracturing technologies make it all possible.

While our new administration is playing green games and speculating on developing unproven marginal and expensive technologies, the grownups will keep plugging away, keeping the little blue flame steady.

This video is hosted on the website of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association.