Pumping Crude is exactly what this Pump Jack was doing. This is the overground driving system for a reciprocating pump thousands of feet below ground in the Powder River Basin.
At the foot of the 13000 feet high Big Horn Mountain Chain.. the whole area is underlain by coal, oil and natural gas deposits.
The Powder River Basin is the tectonic bathtub adjacent to the aforementioned Big Horn Mountain uplift. It is the literally the trough of the sediment wave where the mountains are the crest of the wave of bent Earths crust resultant from huge forces compressing formerly flat sediment into literally a wave form. The sediments washing off the high side of the wave quickly filled in the basin adjacent with sand, gravel and cobbles. The low areas were coal swamp heaven and are loaded with fresh water fossils, crocs, alligators, freshwater fish of all kinds, amphibians, birds, mammals, reptiles and a host of invertebrates/shell fish.
The “Powder River Basin” supplies coal that accounts for 30 percent of the electricity generated in the US and is a good low sulfur coal. Good to export to China to keep them from using their nasty sulfurous coal. This part of the country has a huge hydrocarbon infrastructure. BIG coal mines, lots of natural gas and thousands of these pump jacks spread about.
All the other hydrocarbons are all ultimately resultant from those swamps. Gas and volatile fluids moved away from the coal as diagenesis of the sediments proceeded with those fluids moving to the eventual trap. This well was bored into such a trap. All tenorable oil deposits require a source for the petroleum and a pathway to the trap .
This all happened AFTER the dinosaur died about 66 million years ago.
Just a little Geologic musing for the day…
Location: Eastern Sheridan County Wyoming