Interveiwed on 12/5/98, 9:45 pm - Jay Cerny, Charter School science teacher, former Exxon geologist who worked on oil rigs and told people where to drill.
Q. What chemical equations make up lava?
A. See main image
Q. Did anything related to volcanoes affect your drilling?
A. Yes. When we were drilling through igneous rock it was really tough. The rock would tears bits to snot. Usually you'd get through 2,000 feet of normal rock with a bit, but you'd only get through about 2 feet of igneous rock. It was really expensive because each bit cost $10,000 but sometimes it paid off big. The best resorvoir I ever hit was under igneous rock. Igneous is very impermeable, so no oil seeps out over time.
Q. Could man manipulate volcanoes to serve him better?
A. I think he already does. There's a great renewable, clean energy source in geothermal energy, which they get by drilling to the lava and then dropping water down, which is vaporized into steam, which is harnessed and used to turn the turbines that make electricity. The only problem with this is the risk. In Iceland an entire geothermal plant was swallowed up one day because it was so close to the vent where the lava was and the terrain was unstable.
Note: Not word for word.
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