In attempting to get quickly up to speed on the oil business for the purpose of participating in a few wells as a (very) small investor, I bought about ten books of various sorts. This is one of them, and has turned out to be the one I refer to the most.

First, let me say that there are two different types of books on drilling for oil/gas. Broadly, they are books that concentrate mainly on the financial and legal structure of oil deals and books that concentrate on where it is and how to get it out of the ground. This book is of the second sort.

The "nontechnical" part of the title is only partly true. Some of the descriptions are sufficiently technical to impart a working understanding of the operations in the field. I, for instance, have been going to our rig (now drilling) and asking questions ("What's that blue thing?"), then coming home and reading about what I was told ("The jar is a section of pipe that either mechanically....").

Same with the drilling reports I receive.... I can look up that part of the drilling operation (ie, "sliding") and get a much better understanding of what's happening. A book comes in handy, after all, the tool pushers out on the rigs seem to be men of few words.

There is also a pretty good basic course in petroleum geology in the first thirteen chapters. And, the science (art?) of geophysics gets a good once-over, too, though I confess I've not paid much attention to it yet.

There are chapters on reservoirs, completion, offshore, production, workover, and more, all of which is written at the same level, and much of which I've not read in depth, only scanned. I'll read it as we get there out in the field.

This is a sufficiently information-dense book that actually sitting and reading it from cover to cover won't realistically happen for most folks, no matter how involved. It's more of a textbook and reference resource.

There are lots of diagrams and drawings and pictures (probably three hundred) and they help a lot. The lengthy glossary is OK, though I've not found a petroleum business glossary that seems to be truly comprehensive. (That was written before I found, and ordered, the comprehensive "Dictionary of Petroleum Exploration, Drilling & Production" by who else but Norman J. Hyne, Ph.D.,.... and nope, I have no axe to grind here; and yes, I have noticed that Norman seems to favor long titles). The folks in the oil business rely very heavily on their own language that is a combination of truly technical terminology, oilman slang and everything in between. A glossary is handy. Also be forewarned that the business uses lots of abbreviations, and they seem to change somewhat from company to company, so that a glossary won't ever have all of the abbreviations in use in the field.

There are some other books that do a pretty good job on a more basic level, including "Money In The Ground" by John Orban, III (which also includes deal structure), but, if you are looking for a book that is deep enough to give you a good understanding of the many various aspects of drilling for oil, this is the book.