Wildcat Drilling
Categories: Entrepreneur
Time to take a walk on the wild side. Wildcat drilling is drilling like an adventurer and detective, looking for the next great drilling spot for oil or natural gas. It’s like Nancy Drew meets OPEC. Just go with it.
Wildcat drilling only happens in uncharted territory, where we don’t know if there’s oil/gas there or not (yet). Today, they don’t do this so off-the-cuff. (Jed Clampett's era was different.) Fancy scientists and geologists work to keep wildcat drilling success at a high, meaning they strike metaphorical gold, finding gas and/or oil more often than not. This helps the oil companies save money. It’s also nice that it destroys the environment a bit less through the process of elimination. Thanks, scientists.
Speaking of which...there exist smaller crews who wildcat drill in already drilled areas that the big boys have abandoned. They try to find some oil/gas that the big companies missed in the oil-rig ghost towns left beyond. Like recycling, kind of? Piggybacking off the big companies, where they know oil already exists, is better than having them explore new areas that they aren’t that sure about.
"Come 'n' listen to a story 'bout a man named Jed...poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed...then one day he was shootin' at some 'coon when up from the ground came a bubblin' crude...oil, that is...Texas 'T'..."