How can lubricants reduce the jacking forces?

The lubricating fluid serves to reduce the jacking force in the following ways:

(i) It saturates the overcut leading to partial and complete buoyancy of the jacking pipe in the cavity. As such, the contact surface area between the jacking pipe and soils is decreased.

(ii) It stabilizes the cavity by limiting the radial effective stress acting on the jacking pipe.

(iii) The interface friction angle between the soils and the jacking pipe are reduced by the lubricants.

This question is taken from book named – A Self Learning Manual – Mastering Different Fields of Civil Engineering Works (VC-Q-A-Method) by Vincent T. H. CHU.