In the Oil Blue, you travel across the ocean, searching for abandoned islands that house old refinery equipment you can use to start pumping oil again. Most of the islands were abandoned due to the harsh lifestyle that sea oil drilling entails, but you and a team of trained experts are ready for the challenge.

In the Oil Blue there were four different widely used methods of drilling for oil on islands, and I thought I’d share two of them today. (Using the operator panels shown below, you can control the drills via clicking the buttons with the mouse.)

Groundwell Drilling

One of the most common and widespread forms of drilling during the sea oil boom, Groundwell drilling used magnetic pulses on the surface of the islands and brought up oil from the shallow areas. Groundwell drilling was extremely cheap to maintain, didn’t break, was easy to use, and was safe for the environment. The only catch was that it didn’t produce very much oil, and fell out of use once more advanced forms of drilling were created.

The panel is the least technically advanced you’ll find out there, employing old LCD screens to display data. It didn’t have any form of an operating system to display, requiring the user to be fully knowledgeable of how to operate the machine.

All you have to do is simply control the speed of which you wanted to produce oil. The well was powered by eight battery cells, which the user can turn on and off at any given point. The batteries recharge when not in use, and the user can simply juggle power between cells to keep the drill going. Loss of power results in the oil falling back into the earth, but doesn’t damage the machine.


Oil Derrick Drilling

Retrofitted to work out in the ocean, Oil Derricks were another widespread form of drilling for oil, and produced a lot of barrels of oil a day. It was the complete polar opposite from Groundwell drilling, in that it made lots of oil but was terrible for the environment, somewhat complex, and could break if not operated properly. It’s the oldest form of drilling to date.

The machine first starts off at a preset depth, tracking patterns in the dirt as it drills downwards. These patterns can be simple pockets of air or rubbish, but could also be pockets of oil underground. Once an oil pocket is found, the user can maneuver the drill left to right and slow it down to extend the pumping mechanism. Then, once the pump pierces the oil pocket, the user can start the pumping process and suck all the oil into the reserve tanks. Once completed, the drill speed can be increased and the search for more oil continues.

Pressure can build up into the drill, which the user has to manually release when it reaches a critical point; otherwise the drill suffers stress to the point where it can break down completely. Any time stress is added to a drill, the user can do repairs on the ocean surface, as long as the drill isn’t in use for that day.

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On their own, these machines are very simple to maintain. Of course, when you factor in that you can have multiple instances of these machines all running at the same time…well, things can get quite crazy, very quickly! (this is, in fact, the Ore no Ryomi of oil drilling.)

The game releases in May, and stay tuned later next week for a look at pumpjack/rig drilling, as well as the business side of maintaining a profitable little oil island!