Right up there with, "The sky over the port was the color of television tuned to a dead channel" or "The Man in Black fled across the desert ... or engine management systems — is motor oil.

This can be a problem. When I first started working at a car repair shop (in 1969!), we stored motor oil in 55-gallon drums.

On the Arabian peninsula, U.S. oil giant Chevron has launched a $340-million pilot project to extract heavy oil from beneath the desert sands. WSJ's Ben Casselman reports from Wafra, Kuwait.