Shadowing Practice: Inside the Upstream Process: How Oil & Gas Is Found - Learn English Speaking with Video

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The oil and gas value chain is broadly divided into two segments.

Upstream for the discovery and production of crude oil and natural gas, and downstream for refinement and sales of the end products.

Each is a big industry of its own.

Due to the complexity of each segment, most companies focus on one, though major oil and gas companies are fully integrated across the value chain.

Let's start with upstream.

The world has a surface area of 200 million square miles.

How can oil companies know where oil and gas reserves are?

It starts with the exploration phase.

Explorations can be onshore or offshore, and the objective here is not to find oil or gas,

but to narrow down the search area by identifying potential reservoirs that might host oil and gas.

Have you ever seen someone selecting a watermelon by tapping on it

and listening for a hollow sound sound to see how ripe it is, oil and gas exploration process is similar to that, just more expensive.

A lot more expensive.

The exploratory process starts with seismic surveys of basins to scan below the surface and identify potential reservoir targets.

Seismic surveys use sound waves, akin to the watermelon tapping and listening method, to create images of subsurface rock layers.

The sound waves, generated by a loud bang, like the detonation of dynamite in a hole dug in the ground or from an air gun in the water,

travel through the Earth and are partially reflected by each rock boundary back to the surface.

Geophones placed at the surface record the reflections,

which are then digitized and analyzed by geophysicists to identify potential rock formations that could lead to oil and gas accumulations.

In addition to seismic surveys, companies also conduct regional studies to see if there are discovered reserves in neighboring countries with similar geographies.

This would increase the probability of discovering reserves in the basin under exploration.

Based on the results of seismic surveys and regional studies, companies will decide to proceed to drilling exploratory wells, which are typically 5 inches wide,

with a depth ranging from a few hundred feet to 20,000 feet.

Next, samples are collected from the drilled wells and tested, in attempts to confirm the presence of a reservoir and its properties in terms of volume and mobility,

that is, how easily the reservoir will flow.

Tests are used to create 3D models of the reservoir and to identify the depth of different layers of gas, oil, and water.

This is an important step because drilling to extract oil and gas is a delicate operation, and mistakes can be economically catastrophic.

Even with the most advanced tests and models, exploration is always a risky bet.

companies can spend millions drilling to find an empty well or wells that are not commercially recoverable with existing technologies.

With modern seismic survey technologies the chances of finding oil or gas is less than 20 percent.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “Inside the Upstream Process: How Oil & Gas Is Found”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: oil, gas, companies, seismic, reservoir. This video has 30 sentences and 487 words to shadow. The speech runs for 2:57. The speaker talks at a natural 165 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 77% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
seismic adjective	/ˈsaɪzmɪk/	Related to, or caused by an earthquake or other vibration of the Earth.
reservoir noun	/ˈɹɛz.ə(ɹ).vwɑɹ/	A place where anything is kept in store.
drill noun	/dɹɪl/	A tool or machine used to remove material so as to create a hole, typically by plunging a rotating cutting bit into a stationary workpiece.
exploratory adjective	/ɛkˈsplɒɹ.ə.tə.ɹi/	Serving to explore or investigate.
upstream adjective	/ʌpˈstɹiːm/	In a direction against the flow of a current or stream of fluid (typically water); upriver.
basin noun	/ˈbeɪsɪn/	A wide bowl for washing, sometimes affixed to a wall.
detonation noun	/dɛtəˈneɪʃən/	An explosion or sudden report made by the near-instantaneous decomposition or combustion of unstable substances. Specifically, combustion that spreads…
digitize verb	/ˈdɪd͡ʒɪtaɪz/	To represent something (such as an image or sound) as a structured sequence of binary digits.
geophone noun		A form of microphone that detects and records seismic vibrations.
geophysicist noun		A physicist who specializes in geophysics.
onshore verb	/ˈɒnʃɔː/	To relocate production, services or jobs to lower-cost locations in the same country.
recoverable adjective	/ɹɪˈkʌvɚəb(ə)l/	Capable of being regained or recovered.
refinement noun	/ɹəˈfaɪnmənt/	The act, or the result of refining; the removal of impurities, or a purified material
subsurface adjective		Below the surface.
catastrophic adjective	/ˌkætəˈstɹɑfɪk/	Of or pertaining to a catastrophe.

Pronunciation to watch

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: detonation /dɛtəˈneɪʃən/, onshore /ˈɒnʃɔː/, accumulation /əˌkjuːm.jəˈleɪ.ʃən/, offshore /ɒfˈʃɔː(ɹ)/
Long words — get the stress right: exploratory /ɛkˈsplɒɹ.ə.tə.ɹi/, detonation /dɛtəˈneɪʃən/, recoverable /ɹɪˈkʌvɚəb(ə)l/, catastrophic /ˌkætəˈstɹɑfɪk/, accumulation /əˌkjuːm.jəˈleɪ.ʃən/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like seismic, reservoir, drill.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Inside the Upstream Process: How Oil & Gas Is Found - Learn English Speaking with Video

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