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I know nothing about how oil gets out of the ground. Why is it expensive to stop production at a well site? In my mind you just turn the pump off that's suckin

• labcomputer 7y ago
  For wells in Western Canada, in particular, the challenge is that the oil is so viscous (they're called "tar sands" for a reason) they have to heat (often with steam) the ground to pump it out. As you'd imagine, this requires a large amount of energy. So stopping production implies letting the ground cool, and restarting implies dumping a lot of (expensive) energy back in before oil will flow.
  • aembleton 7y ago
    To continue production, they'd need to put at least as much energy into the ground as it takes to restart it as it always going to be cooling. The energy has to come from somewhere.