The discovery was made by Shell-BP, at the time the sole concessionaire. Nigeria joined the ranks of oil producers in when its first oil field came on stream producing 5, bpd. After , exploration rights in onshore and offshore areas adjoining the Niger Delta were extended to other foreign companies.
In the EA field was discovered by Shell in shallow water southeast of Warri. By the late sixties and early seventies, Nigeria had attained a production level of over 2 million barrels of crude oil a day.
Although production figures dropped in the eighties due to economic slump, saw a total rejuvenation of oil production to a record level of 2.
Wood powered steam engines just fine, but coal had four times the amount of energy in the same volume. With four times the power, wood was out and coal was in. Locomotives travelled the country and ships powered by steam travelled the seas. After a big oil boom in the mids, the popularity of oil grew quickly, and in the 20th Century, oil would dominate the energy industry.
Image Credit: Friends of the Earth. Asphalt was used in the construction of walls and towers in Babylon after being found on the banks of the River Issus. By the first century BC, writings in China cite the use of petroleum without any refining or drilling, and being used as a fuel in the fourth century BC.
The earliest oil wells were drilled in China in the year AD By attaching drill bits to bamboo poles, holes up to feet deep were drilled for oil. By burning the oil, brine was evaporated, producing salt. Ancient records from China and Japan appear to show natural gas being using for lighting and heating. Petroleum was continually used in other places, such as Baghdad, where the first streets were paved with tar from the naturally occurring local fields. In , a Scottish chemist named James Young found a natural petroleum seepage at a coal mine in Derbyshire, England.
By distilling the oil, he created a thin oil for use in lamps and a thicker oil for use as lubrication of machinery. Since the seepage was located in the sandstone roof of the coal mine, he thought that heat could possibly be used to create oil artificially. After numerous experiments, he was able to distill canned coal into a fluid like petroleum. The distillation produced different useful materials, and he filed a patent for a paraffin wax in Discoveries about coal were being made in other countries as well.
Capacity was becoming an issue for Gesner, but as petroleum grew in popularity, it provided an easy path for kerosene production. In Pennsylvania, petroleum seeps were common. Salt water wells were common at the time, but oil contamination of these wells was a nuisance. A man named Samuel Kier started extracting oil from his saltwater wells. After finding that the oil he was extracting had the same chemical structure as the medicinal oil prescribed for his wife, he sold it and made a fortune.
He patented these oils and paraffin wax, also distilled from coal, in , and later that year formed a partnership with geologist Edward William Binney. The partners formed the first truly commercial oil refinery and oil-works in the world, manufacturing oil and paraffin wax from locally mined coal. In , Canadian geologist Abraham Pineo Gesner refined a liquid from coal, oil shale and bitumen that was cheaper and burned more cleanly than other oils.
The first modern wells From these initial discoveries, new businesses were created, with the coal industry now also seeking to create the oils developed by Young and Gesner. The first oil well drilled was in the town of La Brea, Trinidad in It was drilled to a depth of ft by the American Merrimac Company. Big Oil The late 18 th century and the early 19 th century marked the creation of major oil companies that still dominate the oil and gas industry today.
The amount of heat and pressure the plants were exposed to also contributes to variations that are found in hydrocarbons and crude oil. Due to this variation, crude oil that is pumped from the ground can consist of hundreds of different petroleum compounds. It is almost always necessary to refine crude oil in order to make useful products. Classification Oil is classified according to three main categories: the geographic location where it was drilled, its sulfur content, and its API gravity a measure of density.
Classification: Geography Oil is drilled all over the world. However, there are three primary sources of crude oil that set reference points for ranking and pricing other oil supplies: Brent Crude, West Texas Intermediate, and Dubai and Oman. Brent Crude is a mixture that comes from 15 different oil fields between Scotland and Norway in the North Sea.
These fields supply oil to most of Europe. WTI supplies much of North America with oil. Dubai crude, also known as Fateh or Dubai-Oman crude, is a light, sour oil that is produced in Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates. The nearby country of Oman has recently begun producing oil. Dubai and Oman crudes are used as a reference point for pricing Persian Gulf oils that are mostly exported to Asia.
Sulfur in crude oil can corrode metal in the refining process and contribute to air pollution. Petroleum with more than 0. The API has established accepted systems of standards for a variety of oil- and gas-related products, such as gauges, pumps, and drilling machinery.
The API has also established several units of measurement. API gravity is a measure of the density of petroleum liquid compared to water. Light oils are preferred because they have a higher yield of hydrocarbons.
Heavier oils have greater concentrations of metals and sulfur, and require more refining. Petroleum Reservoirs Petroleum is found in underground pockets called reservoirs. Deep beneath the Earth, pressure is extremely high. Petroleum slowly seeps out toward the surface, where there is lower pressure. It continues this movement from high to low pressure until it encounters a layer of rock that is impermeable. The petroleum then collects in reservoirs, which can be several hundred meters below the surface of the Earth.
Oil can also be contained by stratigraphic traps. Different strata, or layers of rock, can have different amounts of porosity. Crude oil migrates easily through a layer of sandstone, for instance, but would be trapped beneath a layer of shale.
Geologists, chemists, and engineers look for geological structures that typically trap petroleum. During the process, a small explosion is set off. Sound waves travel underground, bounce off of the different types of rock, and return to the surface. Sensors on the ground interpret the returning sound waves to determine the underground geological layout and possibility of a petroleum reservoir. The amount of petroleum in a reservoir is measured in barrels or tons. An oil barrel is about 42 gallons.
This measurement is usually used by oil producers in the United States. Oil producers in Europe and Asia tend to measure in metric tons. There are about 6 to 8 barrels of oil in a metric ton.
The conversion is imprecise because different varieties of oil weigh different amounts, depending on the amount of impurities. Crude oil is frequently found in reservoirs along with natural gas. In the past, natural gas was either burned or allowed to escape into the atmosphere. Now, technology has been developed to capture the natural gas and either reinject it into the well or compress it into liquid natural gas LNG.
LNG is easily transportable and has versatile uses. Extracting Petroleum In some places, petroleum bubbles to the surface of the Earth. In parts of Saudi Arabia and Iraq, for instance, porous rock allows oil to seep to the surface in small ponds. However, most oil is trapped in underground oil reservoirs. The total amount of petroleum in a reservoir is called oil-in-place. These petroleum liquids may be too difficult, dangerous, or expensive to drill.
Drilling can either be developmental, exploratory, or directional. Drilling in an area where oil reserves have already been found is called developmental drilling. Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, has the largest oil reserves in the United States. Developmental drilling in Prudhoe Bay includes new wells and expanding extraction technology. Drilling where there are no known reserves is called exploratory drilling. McCarthy struck oil 38 times in the s, earning millions of dollars.
Directional drilling involves drilling vertically to a known source of oil, then veering the drill bit at an angle to access additional resources. Accusations of directional drilling led to the first Gulf War in Iraq accused Kuwait of using directional drilling techniques to extract oil from Iraqi oil reservoirs near the Kuwaiti border. Iraq subsequently invaded Kuwait, an act which drew international attention and intervention. After the war, the border between Iraq and Kuwait was redrawn, with the reservoirs now belonging to Kuwait.
Oil Rigs On land, oil can be drilled with an apparatus called an oil rig or drilling rig. Offshore, oil is drilled from an oil platform. Primary Production Most modern wells use an air rotary drilling rig, which can operate 24 hours a day. In this process, engines power a drill bit.
A drill bit is a cutting tool used to create a circular hole. The drill bits used in air rotary drilling rigs are hollow steel, with tungsten rods used to cut the rock. Petroleum drill bits can be 36 centimeters 14 inches in diameter. As the drill bit rotates and cuts through the earth, small pieces of rock are chipped off.
A powerful flow of air is pumped down the center of the hollow drill, and comes out through the bottom of the drill bit.
The air then rushes back toward the surface, carrying with it tiny chunks of rock. Geologists on site can study these pieces of pulverized rock to determine the different rock strata the drill encounters. When the drill hits oil, some of the oil naturally rises from the ground, moving from an area of high pressure to low pressure.
It is also one of the most dangerous, and a piece of equipment called a blowout preventer redistributes pressure to stop such a gusher. Pumps are used to extract oil. Most oil rigs have two sets of pumps: mud pumps and extraction pumps. Mud pumps circulate drilling fluid. The petroleum industry uses a wide variety of extraction pumps.
Which pump to use depends on the geography, quality, and position of the oil reservoir. Submersible pumps, for example, are submerged directly into the fluid. A gas pump, also called a bubble pump, uses compressed air to force the petroleum to the surface or well. One of the most familiar types of extraction pumps is the pumpjack , the upper part of a piston pump. A crank moves the large, hammer-shaped pumpjack up and down. Far below the surface, the motion of the pumpjack moves a hollow piston up and down, constantly carrying petroleum back to the surface or well.
Successful drilling sites can produce oil for about 30 years, although some produce for many more decades. Other methods are necessary to extract this petroleum, a process called secondary recovery. Vacuuming the extra oil out was a method used in the s and early 20th century, but it captured only thinner oil components, and left behind great stores of heavy oil. Water flooding was discovered by accident. In the s, oil producers in Pennsylvania noticed that abandoned oil wells were accumulating rainwater and groundwater.
The weight of the water in the boreholes forced oil out of the reservoirs and into nearby wells, increasing their production. Oil producers soon began intentionally flooding wells as a way to extract more oil.
The most prevalent secondary recovery method today is gas drive. During this process, a well is intentionally drilled deeper than the oil reservoir.
The deeper well hits a natural gas reservoir, and the high-pressure gas rises, forcing the oil out of its reservoir. Oil Platforms Drilling offshore is much more expensive than drilling onshore. It usually uses the same drilling techniques as onshore, but requires a massive structure that can sustain the tremendous strength of ocean waves in stormy seas. Offshore drilling platforms are some of the largest manmade structures in the world.
0コメント