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Oil companies attracted many people because of the excitement of
finding a gusher with hopes of instant wealth. Prospecting for
oil was hard work and dangerous. After you find oil, drilling the well
to extract it may be more difficult. Funds were needed for drilling,
which was then, and still is today, an expensive operation.
Oil is dangerous by its very nature. Many times it is in layers of
the Earth with natural gas, and can create a fire storm if there
is just one spark. In the movies they enacted the "There she
blows!" referring to a geyser of oil shooting through a derrick.
The gushers are under extreme pressure and difficult to cap to
prevent the lost of petroleum. Specialized drilling rigs to control the
flow of oil had to be developed.
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