Pumping Jack Stash

No!  That Is Not A Typo

It is an hilarious pun, as punny as it gets so LAUGH OR REMOTE NUCLEAR TORMENTOR.  Thank you, I have spoken.

     First of all, I would like to address the issue of 'Jacks'.  There are many of these monikers infesting the modern world, not the least the ones that 'Monty Python' warned us about.  Art!

A lumbering jack

     Conrad wonders what British American lumberjacks in the bewooded hinterland made of this song.  I fear it is unwise to antagonise men armed with chainsaws and axes.

     ANYWAY then we have - Art!

     Flapjack!  A delicious combination of oats, syrup, sugar and butter which I cannot gorge on THANK YOU SO MUCH DIABETES.  Perhaps it's about time I did make some, and ate them very very slowly?  Put a pin in that one.

     ANYWAY AGAIN there is also 'Crackerjack', which was a children's television program that ran for thirty years, broadcast live on Friday afternoons at five to five.  Art!

     None of these are what this Intro is about - I am sure you're shocked and disappointed by this news - because we're going to be studying the 'Pump Jack', thanks to a Youtube video from 'History Of Simple Things' which I Bookmarked.  Art!

     The apt nickname for these apparati is 'Nodding Donkeys', as they ceaselessly move up and down, raising and lowering a long metal rod.  They were invented by one Walter Trout in 1925, so over a century ago and yet are still in use across the globe.

     So - what are they?  O I thought you'd never ask!  They are used to extract oil from wells where there is very little pressure, meaning that the oil does not naturally gush it's way to the surface and needs helping on it's way, the poor feeble stuff.  The first step in the process is to place a 'downhole pump' atop the underground reservoir, or 'stash'*.  Art!

     Here the barrel and plunger assembly are at the bottom of the borehole, inside the production tubing.  Lots and lots of steel piping - 'sucker rods' - are then placed atop the pump, all the way to the surface.  A piston inside these rods then moves up and down, alternately pulling oil into the pump and then moving it up the rods internally.  Art!

     The piston doesn't move the oil upwards any great distance with each movement, but the movement is cumulative and eventually brings it to the surface. where it is stored for onward transport.  Art!

     That's the 'walking beam pump', to give it the formal classification, at maximum and minimum height, and it's this engine that imparts motion to the sucker rod.  Let us look at this engine in more detail.  Art!

     TYPO AHOY!  That ought to be 'Downhole Pumping Unit'.  The 'Prime mover' is jargon for a motor, which runs a belt to the gear reducer, adjusting the turning rate to one that won't destroy the pump.  A massive counterweight helps the motor on it's downstroke, and the connecting rod moves the walking beam up and down.  The 'Pumping Unit' is more colloquially known as the 'Horse head' for obvious reasons, and on the upstroke pulls oil up the sucker rod, on the downstroke moving to the bottom of the down hole pump.  Art!

     There are several reasons why pumpacks are still in use extensively, despite being centenarians.  For one thing, they are relatively simple machines with a limited number of moving parts that reduces points of failure.  For another, they are very robust, and pump jacks over sixty years old are still in operation.  Then again, they are cheap to operate, requiring only occasional maintenance and inspection rather than having a dedicated crew in attendance.  Art!

     You were probably expecting another nodding donkey from the oilfields of West Texas, weren't you?  Say hello to Kimmeridge in Dorset, in the Allotment Of Eden, which sports it's very own pumpjack.  Remember what I said about pumpjacks being in use for decades?  This one began operating in 1964 and produces 65 barrels of oil per day.  Eat your heart out Ruffians.  I cannot find a quote for Dorset Crude, but Brent is down for $67.41 per barrel, so that comes in at over $1.5 million per annum, nothing to sneeze at for an installation that basically costs pennies to run.

     There is more to be written about pumpjacks on the territory of Perfidious Albion, which will be deferred to a later date.  I bet you can hardly wait.


The Algorithm Has A Brain Fart

Ah yes, Blogger, and it's traffic-tracking statistics, which have done the opposite of falling off a cliff.  More like ascended the mountain on a rocket-sled.  Art!

     I think this was a day in January.  Well, it does help me have over a million hits to the blog since it began - Gosh! - 13 years ago.

I Couldn't Resist

Conrad, bless his scrofulous little paws, has a weakness for Sour Cream And Chive Pringles, which he occasionally purchases as they are VERY VERY BAD FOR YOU INDEED and must be eaten sparingly in single amounts.  By wild coincidence, what did I see on my news feed?  Art!

     If they are 'just realizing' then they are a bunch of bafunes, because the contents are printed out on the labelling, for the love of Darjeeling.  BOOJUM! has often described the contents of various shampoos and other toiletries, because that's the kind of sad obsessive Your Humble Scribe is.  Let me explicate:

Dehydrated potatoes, sunflower oil, corn flour, wheat flour, sour cream seasoning, onion powder, disodium guanylate, disodium inosinate, dextrose, maize starch, wheat starch, salt, sugar, sour cream powder, sweet whey powder, sunflower oil - TYPO IT'S ALREADY BEEN MENTIONED!, citric acid, rice flour, maltodextrin, rapeseed oil and annatto norbixin.

      Yes, I already explained how thoroughly bad these are for you <eats two at once>.

The More Things Change -

The more they revert back to the same.  Art!

     Conrad was struck by the similarities in these two photographs, taken 108 years apart on different battlefields.  The bottom one is from Ukrainian lines in November of 2025 and shows a couple of soldiers keeping low in a gully, to avoid being spotted by enemy drones or forward observers.  The top photo is often used in articles about the First Unpleasantness and is one party of the 10th Battalion the London Scottish, carrying out a trench raid on the Teutons in 1917.  You can tell it's a trench raid as the men are carrying only weapons, no packs or harnesses, and they are 'jumping off' from a shallow trench dug to get them closer to Teuton lines - otherwise they'd be wiped out crossing No Man's Land, which stark and horrible lesson still applies today.

Another In Our Ever-Growing Library

From the gruesome to the grotesque in one easy step.  Art!

     I will be merciful and not use 'Extra-Large' for this illo.  Here you get a splendid perspective on Donnie Dorko's second neck, rather than a mere chin, as it seems to extend all around his body instead of being modestly bounded by his mentum*.

Not Sure How We Got Here

Further to Donold Judas Trump (see above), one of his most bootlicking sycophantic bottom-kissers used to be Marjorie Traitor Greene, the Kremlin-echoing Representative for Georgia's 14th District.  Art!

She makes trailer-trash seem classy by comparison

     Conrad's unkind nickname for her was 'Bloaty McBloatface', in an echo of the British Arctic exploration ship the public christened 'Boaty McBoatface' - a whole other story.  Now, not only is she dead-set against DJ Tango, she's retiring from the House whilst spitting venom at her former idol.  Who would have foreseen this on this date last year? and this is not so much about Politics as spite, pettiness and an awareness that people don't like her very much.  

      She may be able to get work as an after-dinner speaker at Burger King.

Finally -

Ending on another Biercism.

"Plan, v: To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result."

*  Not an oilfield term but we have to link with today's title somehow.

**  Latin for 'chin'.  He seems to have - waitforitwaitforit - mo' mentum.