One of the greatest films you are ever likely to see about the intensity, competition and dynamism in American capitalism, There Will be Blood, is the midnight movie tonight in the Warch Campus Cinema. As I watched the movie, I marveled at how all of those people and resources made their way into the middle of backwater nowhere within days of identifying a promising play. If you are a night owl type, I recommend you stroll over and see it.
As for the famous “milkshake” reference, that has to do with the “fugitive” nature of petroleum. Indeed, as I tell my students, oil is more like buffalo, and gold is more like cows. Gary Libecap has written extensively on oil field unitization as a solution to the “milkshake” problem. Indeed, yours truly knows a thing or two about how this all played out.