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Petroleum industry: introduction to oil and gas
Since Colonel Drake ushered in the era of drilling for oil with his 1859 well in Pennsylvania, petroleum engineers and other industry professionals have made numerous innovations that enable the industry to find and produce the resources that power the world economy.
This was not the first well drilled. Other wells had previously been drilled in several countries around the world, including Azerbaijan and Canada. But this well started the "modern" drilling era by attracting the attention and necessary capital investment that enabled the development of new technologies for accessing oil and gas deposits.
Oil and natural gas are an important part of your everyday life. Not only do they give us mobility, they heat and cool our homes and provide electricity. Millions of products are made from oil and gas, including plastics, life-saving medications, clothing, cosmetics, and many other items you may use daily.
In the United States, 97 % of the energy that drives the transportation sector (cars, buses, subways, railroads, airplanes, etc.) comes from fuels made from oil'. Auto manufacturers are developing cars to run on alternate fuels such as electricity, hydrogen and ethanol. However, the electric batteries need to be charged and the fuel to generate the electricity could be oil or gas. The hydrogen needed for fuel cells may be generated from natural gas or petroleum-based products. Even as alternative fuels are developed, oil will be crucially important to assuring that people can get where they need to be and want to go for the foreseeable future. Barring any increase in the penetration of new technologies, alternative fuels are not expected to become competitive with oil for transportation before 20252.
In areas of the world that are still developing, businesses and individuals are demanding greater mobility for themselves and their products. World vehicle ownership is projected to increase from 122 vehicles per thousand people in 1999 to 144 vehicles per thousand in 2020, with the growth occurring in developing nations. In China, for example, the number of cars has been growing by 20 % per year3. Airports are being added in these countries as well, expanding jet fuel demand. Oil is expected to remain the primary fuel source for transportation throughout the world for the foreseeable future, and transportation fuels are projected to account for almost 57 % of total world oil consumption by 20201.
World population is currently around 6 billion people, but is expected to grow to approximately 7,6 billion by 2020. That will mean a huge increase in the demand for transportation fuels, electricity, and many other consumer products made from oil and natural gas.
Natural-gas use is growing across all economic sectors. Natural gas burns cleaner than oil or coal, and this environmental benefit has encouraged its use. While decades ago, natural gas was seen as an unwanted by-product of oil and may have been wasted, its value has been recognized. Developing nations with gas reserves are finding this resource invaluable to building their economies. Most natural gas is distributed by pipelines, which is a limiting factor for remote resources that are not near the major consuming markets. Some natural gas is chilled to a liquid state (LNG) whereby it can be transported across oceans by tanker. Similarly, there is considerable development of technology to convert natural gas to liquids (GTL) to enable transportation.
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The world economy runs on oil and natural gas. These fuels improve your quality of life by providing you with transportation, warmth, light, and many everyday products. They enable you to get where you need to go, they supply products you need, and they create jobs. Without oil and natural gas, quality of life would decline and people in developing nations would not be able to improve their standard of living. Does that mean that alternative energy sources are not necessary? Of course not. But it is important to acknowledge the value of oil and gas to the world economy and recognize that it will be decades before the alternatives can replace all of things that oil and natural gas contribute to our lives.
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A brief history of petroleum – upstream, downstream, all around the stream
Do you know that nowdays speaking about all activities connected withoil and gas industry the petroleum experts use three terms: upstream, midstream and downstream? All of the oil world is divided into three: 1) the "upstream" comprises exploration and production; 2) the "midstream" are the tankers and pipelines that carry crude oil to refineries; 3) the "downstream" which includes refining, marketing, and distribution, right down to the corner gasoline station or convenient store. A company that includes together significant upstream and downstream activities is said to be "integrated".
By generally accepted theory, crude oil is the residue of organic waste — primarily microscopic plankton floating in seas, and also land plants — that accumulated at the bottom of oceans, lakes, and coastal areas. Over millions of years, this organic matter, rich in carbon and hydrogen atoms, was collected beneath successive levels of sediments. Pressure and underground heat "cooked" the plant matter, converting it into hydrocarbons — oil and natural gas. The tiny droplets of oil liquid migrated through small pores and fractures in the rocks until they were trapped in permeable rocks, sealed by shale rocks on top and heavier salt water at the bottom.
Typically, in such a reservoir, the lightest gas fills the pores of the reservoir rock as a "gas cap" above the oil. When a drill bit penetrates the reservoir, the lower pressure inside the bit allows the oil fluid to flow into the well bore and then to the surface as a flowing well. "Gushers" — "oil fountains" as they were called in Russia — resulted from failure (or, at the time, inability) to manage the pressure of the rising oil. As production continues over time, the underground pressure runs down, and the wells need help to keep going, either from surface pumps or from gas reinjected back into the well, known as "gas lift". What comes to the surface is hot crude oil, sometimes accompanied by natural gas.
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But as it flows from a well, crude oil itself is a commodity with very few direct uses. Virtually all crude is processed in a refinery to turn it into useful products like gasoline, jet fuel, home heating oil, and industrial fuel oil.
In the early years of the industry, a refinery was little more than a still where the crude was boiled and then the different products were condensed out at various temperatures. The skills required were not all that different from making moonshine, which is why whiskey makers went into oil refining in the nineteenth century. Today, a refinery is often a large, complex, sophisticated, and expensive manufacturing facility.
Crude oil is a mixture of petroleum liquids and gases in various combinations. Each of these compounds has some value, but only as they are isolated in the refining process. So, the first step in refining is to separate the crude into constituent parts. This is accomplished by thermal distillation — heating. The various components vaporize at different temperatures and then can be condensed back into pure "streams".
Some streams can be sold as they are. Others are put through further processes to obtain higher-value products. In simple refineries, these processes are primarily from the removal of unwanted impurities and to make minor changes in chemical properties. In more complex refineries, major restructuring of the molecules is carried out through chemical processes that are known as "cracking" or "conversion". The result is an increase in the quantity of higher-quality products, such as gasoline, and a decrease in the output of such lower-value products as fuel oil and asphalt.
Crude oil and refined products alike are today moved by tankers, pipelines, barges, and trucks. In Europe, oil is often officially measured in metric tons; in Japan, in kiloliters. But in the United States and Canada, and colloquially throughout the world, the basic unit remains in "barrel", though there is hardly an oil man today who has seen an old-fashioned crude oil barrel, except in a museum.
When oil first started flowing out of the wells in western Pennsylvania in the 1860's, desperate oil men ransacked farmhouses, barns, cellars, stores, and trashyards for any kind of barrel — molasses, beer, whiskey, cider, turpentine, sale, fish, and whatever else was handy. But as coopers began to make barrels especially for the oil trade, one standard size emerged, and that size continues to be the norm to the present. It is 42 gallons.
The number was borrowed from England, where a statute in 1482 under King Edward IV established 42 gallons as the standard size barrel for herring in order to end skullduggery and "divers deceits" in the packing of fish. At the time, herring fishing was the biggest business in the North Sea. By 1866, seven years after Colonel Drake drilled his well, Pennsylvania producers confirmed the 42-gallon barrel as their standard, as opposed to, say, the 31 1/2 gallon wine barrel or the 32 gallon London ale barrel or the 36 gallon London beer barrel.
And that, in a roundabout way, brings us right back to the present day. For the 42 gallon barrel is still used as the standard measurement, even if not as a physical receptacle, in the biggest business in the North Sea~which today of course in not herring, but oil.