Just the Basics on Crude Oil

Just the Basics on crude Oil

Question Title for this Section: ______

Crude oil is the term for "unprocessed" oil, the stuff that comes out of the ground. It is also known as petroleum. Crude oil is a fossil fuel, meaning that it was made naturally from decaying plants and animals (aquatic protists) living in ancient seas millions of years ago -- most places you can find crude oil were once sea beds. The aquatic protists are subjected to heat and pressure, and turn into oil. Crude oil is made of many hydrocarbon chains. Crude oils vary in color, from clear to tar-black, and in viscosity, from water to almost solid

Removing crude oil from the ground can be a difficult process. In primary oil recovery, a well is drilled through many layers of rock to the oil reservoir. The crude oil is then pumped out from underground. Once crude oil levels become low in the reservoir, the oil extracting companies need to employ secondary oil recovery. In this process, water is injected into a neighboring well. This steam water injection forces heavy oil up into the main well to be pumped out. Off shore oil platforms are built to remove oil that lays beneath the ocean floor. They are extremely dangerous to work on (as they are subjected to ocean storms), but can create artificial reefs underneath the water.

After the crude oil is pumped out of the ground, the crude oil is usually loaded on huge oil tanker ships, which deliver the oil to a crude oil refinery. The oil refining process starts with a fractional distillation column.The problem with crude oil is that it contains hundreds of different types of hydrocarbons all mixed together. You have to separate the different types of hydrocarbons to have anything useful. Fortunately, there is an easy way to separate things, and this is what oil refining is all about. Different hydrocarbon chain lengths all have progressively higher boiling points, so they can all be separated by distillation. This is what happens in an oil refinery - in one part of the process, crude oil is heated and the different chains are pulled out by their vaporization temperatures. Each different chain length has a different property that makes it useful in a different way.These products are made from crude oil, starting from heaviest to lightest: Asphalt, wax, naphtha, diesel oil, heating oil, jet fuel, gasoline, cooking gases (propane, butane).

OPEC is the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. In accordance with its Statute, the mission of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is to coordinate and unify the petroleum policies of its Member Countries and ensure the stabilization of oil markets in order to secure an efficient, economic and regular supply of petroleum to consumers, a steady income to producers and a fair return on capital for those investing in the petroleum industry. Currently, the Organization has a total of 12 Member Countries: Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. The 1973 oil crisis started in October 1973, when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries or the OAPEC (consisting of the Arab members of OPEC, plus Egypt, Syria and Tunisia) proclaimed an oil embargo. In the Yom Kippur War of that year, Egypt and Syria, with the support of other Arab nations, launched a military campaign against Israel on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar in order to regain Arab territories lost to Israel in the 1967 Six Day War. The United States chose to re-supply Israel with arms and in response, OAPEC decided to retaliate, announcing an oil embargo against Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It lasted until March 1974. The effects of the embargo were immediate. OPEC forced the oil companies to increase payments drastically. The price of oil quadrupled by 1974 to nearly US$12 per barrel (75 US$/m3 now). Question Title for this Section: ______

There are three main components that determine the price of gasoline at out gas stations. 1) How much oil is pumped?, 2) How much oil is being refined?, 3) Operational costs of gas stations. Remember that the price of gas does not include externalities- the cost or benefit that affects a party who did not choose to incur that cost or benefit. Such externalities with gasoline include air pollution.

Scientists have looked for other ways of extracting oil. Shale oil is a fine-grained rock containing a mix of hydrocarbons called kerogen. It can be mined. The shale is crushed and heated until the kerogen is vaporized. Then, the kerogen oil vapor is condensed to make shale oil (which can be refined).

In Canada, tar sands are heavily mined for oil. A tar sand is a mixture of clay, sand, water, and bitumen (a high sulfur oil). The bitumen is removed by heating the sand until the bitumen softens and floats to the surface. This bitumen is then refined. Question Title for this Section: ______

Here are the advantages and disadvantages to using crude oil.

Advantages of Crude Oil Use Disadvantages of Crude Oil Use

• Oil is one of the most abundant energy resources • Oil burning leads to carbon emissions • Liquid form of oil makes it easy to transport and use  MTBE (additive used in gas) use in 1980’s and 1990’s led to • Oil has high heating value groundwater pollution • Relatively inexpensive  Finite resources (some disagree) may lead to wars. • No new technology needed to use • Oil recovery processes not efficient enough—technology needs to be developed to provide better yields • Oil drilling endangers the environment and ecosystesm • Oil transportation (by ship) can lead to spills, causing environmental and ecological damage (1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska)

Question Title for this Section: ______In 1956, scientists M.K. Hubbert proposed that crude oil reserve and production will peak in the 1970’s and decline there after. He called is theory Peak Oil. Using many mathematical models, he plotted his data on what he called the Hubbert curve. And, to back his scientific findings, US oil production peaked in 1971.

The BP Oil Spill of April 19, 2010

The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill (aka BP Oil Spill) was one of the worst oil disasters in history. In the BP Oil Spill, more than 200 million gallons of crude oil was pumped into the Gulf of Mexico for a total of 87 days, making it the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. The initial oil rig explosion killed 11 people and injured 17 others. Oil continues to wash on shore in Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Texas, and Mississippi. BP is responsible for close to $40 billion in fines, cleanup costs, and settlements as a result of the oil spill in 2010, with an additional $16 billion due to the Clean Water Act. Over 8,000 animals (birds, turtles, mammals) were reported dead just 6 months after the spill, including many that are already on the endangered species list. Immediate impact on the wildlife includes oil-coated birds and sea turtles, mammal ingestion of oil, and dead or dying deep-sea coral.

Clean Up Techniques for an Oil Spill:

1. ______2. ______3. ______4. ______5. ______

Directions: Part One: For each paragraph, give the section a title using a question. This requires you to read the paragraph and summarize what the reading is teaching you.

Part Two: Answer these questions using complete sentences on a separate sheet of paper. 1. How is crude oil formed? 2. Compare primary to secondary oil recovery. 3. How does crude oil refining work and what products can be made from crude oil refining? 4. Who is OPEC and what do they do? 5. What determines the price of a gallon of gas? 6. Compare shale oil to a tar sand. 7. Out of all of the advantages listed for crude oil use, which one do you think makes the best economic argument? Why? 8. Out of all of the disadvantages listed for crude oil use, which one do you think makes the best environmental argument? Why? 9. In the year 2008, gasoline prices have risen over four dollars per gallon. How much are you willing to spend on gasoline? At what cost would you decide it’s too expensive? How could you maintain your current lifestyle without petroleum? What life changes would you make? 10. What are some of the reasons that energy independence and creating alternatives to oil have become such prominent issues in American media and politics in recent years? 11. Did you know that Americans make up only 5% of the world population? Should the U.S. be able to consume 25% of the world’s petroleum? Why or why not?