Oilfield Units: a Measurement System so Cursed it made me Change Career

Comments · 4.7K

• AL

  @Alexander-the-ok · 11 months ago (edited) · pinned

  I absolutely love how everyone is most outraged about ‘decimal feet’ and ‘dog leg severity’. Those are 2 things I basically gloss over because I didn’t really consider them to be that ‘major’.<br><br>I swear, if anyone else mentions ‘1029.4’….<br>In the example calculation, an oilfield worker wouldn’t derive the output like I did, they’d just use their green book to look up the hole size conversion factor. Which is 1029.4. That is pi multiplied by the unit conversions I did. Just as with the pressure formula at the end, it’s the same thing.<br>You aren’t doing ‘better maths’ or ‘using the units as intended’, you are instead walking around with a head full of memorized conversion factors, or a green book. With SI, you don’t need to do that.<br><br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdWEGzWFcCc&amp;t=819">13:39</a> Oh hang on, i just realised I accidentally made the Darcy look better than it is. It should say &apos;1 ATM&apos; onscreen as in the script, not &apos;1 Bar&apos;. They are close but not the same.<br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdWEGzWFcCc&amp;t=953">15:53</a> I kind of prove my own point by reading out the wrong number (the onscreen calcs are correct).<br><br><br>Alright, alright I did make fun of US units in my RD-701 video. Whatever. Stop using stupid units and I’ll stop making fun of you (that goes for you too Britain and Canada).

  3.2K

• SC

  @Scottagram · 11 months ago

  This is the mathematical Tower of Babel. For trying to dig into hell, we were punished by being split into ten thousand different units.

  10K

• WH

  @Whatsinanameanyway13 · 11 months ago

  This is why it&apos;s easier to send a bunch of oilfield drillers to space to drill into an asteroid rather than train astronauts to drill.

  7.3K

• TH

  @TheMarcQ · 11 months ago

  ppg: parts per gazilion

  2.4K

• ME

  @meguy798 · 10 months ago

  So I decided to look up the green book he was referring to. <br><br>Even the table of contents is written in an astanine way: chapters aren&apos;t numbered or anything, they are ordered by LETTERS A-M, with no particular reason I can find. <br><br>To make this even more annoying, the index is also listed as a chapter after M but with no letter assigned for some reason. Numbered chapters aren&apos;t &quot;proper&quot;, apparently.

  1.3K

• AT

  @atleyf3500 · 11 months ago

  The fact that the British thermal unit is differently defnied in America and Canada just absolutely broke me

  5.2K

• JO

  @johnn8223 · 11 months ago

  &quot;Dogleg Severity&quot; is an outstanding band name.

  2.4K

• MI

  @mikem0898 · 11 months ago (edited)

  Still Wakes the Deep horror game but instead of an eldritch abomination you&apos;re being chased by a dude with an excel spreadsheet to be corrected

  5.3K

• CR

  @CreepyHandedMan · 7 months ago

  This is real-life spaghetti code technical debt. Amazing.

  188

• IT

  @itar10n · 11 months ago

  I&apos;m now a proponent of green energy. Not because of &apos;save the world&apos;, no. It&apos;s entirely based on the need to scrub at least some of these units from the world.

  1.3K

• RO

  @robertl6196 · 11 months ago

  A tape measure in tenths. &nbsp;I MUST get one and randomly leave it laying out at work, just to see the chaos it creates.

  2.7K

• BR

  @brycemartin7461 · 11 months ago

  Retired petroleum engineer here. Laughed out loud! &nbsp;I reckon I spent at least a year of my 25 years just doing unit conversions and then double checking them. Here’s another one for your list. Reservoir volume measured in ‘acre feet’.

  1K