Some news show I was watching the other night was talking about how the U.S. is targeting oil production/transportation facilities controlled by ISL in order to cut down on revenue. The story went on to say that the missions had been largely ineffective with repairs being made in a day or so. Now they are bombing with the intention of knocking them off line for a month or more. My question is this - how was it possible to repair these things in a day? What were they dropping, firecrackers? It took me more than a day to get my car fixed and it didn’t have a 250 lb. bomb dropped on it. Something just doesn’t sound right about this.
A well is just a hole in the ground with apparatus on the surface to pump out the oil. I imagine the repairs were made by clearing away the bombed surface apparatus and replacing it with parts, or whole new rigs, from other nearby wells.
I’d think if they were destroying pumpjacks or drilling rigs, that might explain it.
I don’t think you can put a bombed refinery back in commision in a day or two. If so, we’re doing it wrong, and need to take a page from the 8th Air Force, and line up the B-52s in formation and bomb the bejeezus out of the entire area at once.
I’d think for wellheads, some kind of penetrating bomb would be most effective- something that would penetrate deep and then explode, requiring the whole shebang to be dug up and repaired. Assuming our bombs are accurate enough to target an individual wellhead close enough for a conventional warhead to do any damage, that is.
As noted in this Wall Street Journal article,
That’s not a very “Team America” approach!! 