Petroleum and Its Origin
Petroleum (derived from Latin petra - rock + Latin oleum – oil) is a naturally occurring, flammable liquid found in rock formations in the Earth consisting of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights, plus other organic compounds.Thus, it is a long complex chain of hydrocarbons which carries a mixture of around 500 chemical compounds.Petroleum is often called as oil. Oil can be as thick as tar or can be as thin as water.
HISTORY:-
Petroleum, in some form or other, is not a substance new in the world's history. The earliest known oil wells were drilled in China in 347 BC or earlier. They had depths of up to about 800 feet (240 m) and were drilled using bits attached to bamboo poles.The oil was burned to evaporate brine and produce salt. In the 9th century, oil fields were exploited in the area around modern Baku, Azerbaijan, to produce naphtha. The modern history of petroleum began in 1846 with the discovery of the process of refining kerosene from coal by Nova Scotian Abraham Pineo Gesner. In 1854, Benjamin Silliman, a science professor at Yale University in New Haven, was the first to fractionate petroleum by distillation. These discoveries rapidly spread around the world, and Meerzoeff built the first Russian refinery in the mature oil fields at Baku in 1861. At that time Baku produced about 90% of the world's oil.
The first commercial oil well drilled in Romania in 1857 at Bend, North of Bucharest. The first oil well in North America was in Oil Springs, Ontario, Canada in 1858, dug by James Miller Williams. The petroleum industry grew through the 1800s, driven by the demand for kerosene and oil lamps. It became a major national concern in the early part of the 20th century; the introduction of the internal combustion engine provided a demand that has largely sustained the industry to this day. Even until the mid-1950s, coal was still the world's foremost fuel, but oil quickly took over. Following the 1973 energy crisis and the 1979 energy crisis, there was significant media coverage of oil supply levels. This brought to light the concern that oil is a limited resource that will eventually run out, at least as an economically viable energy source. Petroleum's worth as a portable, dense energy source powering the vast majority of vehicles and as the base of many industrial chemicals makes it one of the world's most important commodities
After the Second World War, the world was more interesting in oil than ever before. The conflict itself made the countries of the world realize that oil was a serious factor in the quest for power. From this point in history, oil was considered the driving force behind a successful economy and therefore attaining power. Therefore the quest for oil heightened during and after World War II. In the effort to acquire more oil, many countries began to seek out additional locations to drill and this drove the United States to the Middle East. In late 1943 a man named DeGolyer who was a geologist went on a mission to Saudi Arabia to survey the possibility for oil. His mission there concluded that “the oil in this region is the greatest single prize in all history”. With such a conclusion it is not surprising that the United States began extremely concerned with the oil concessions there.
One of these factors was the logistical nightmare of redeveloping the infrastructure needed to transport oil to the refinery. As early as 1881, Standard oil operated approximately 3,000 miles of pipelines, eventually owning ninety percent of the nation’s pipelines. Although transcontinental railroads were an available alternative, pipelines were cheaper, reduced handling and storage fees, and were more efficient. The fact that modern oil companies invest hundreds of millions of dollars into speculating for sustainable natural oil deposits implies that such deposits are rare and hard to identify with a passing glance. If the spurts of oil proved to be isolated incidents, the capital invested in building pipelines and reestablishing a monopoly would have been squandered.
Almost every single nation in our world today, the United States included, is extremely reliant on oil and how much of it we can obtain. Wars have been started between countries vying for control of this valuable natural resource. The United States as a whole has been trying to reduce its reliance on foreign oil and has had some success, especially with the discovery of the Bakken formation and projects like the Keystone Pipeline.
Oil has always been a coveted natural resource. Oil was discovered in the United States in 1859; since it was a young industry, it was without any structure. That is where John Davison Rockefeller stepped in. John Rockefeller was at one point one of the richest men in the world, monopolizing the oil industry which played a major role in shaping the economy.
Oil was first discovered in the mid-seventeenth century by Spanish explorers. July of 1543 Spanish explorer Luis de Moscoso saw oil floating on the water in the Galveston Bay (Olien 1). In the beginning there was no market or demand for oil until following the Civil War period, entrepreneurs begin digging wells. The first significant oil discovery in Texas was in 1894 in Navarro County near
America the beautiful, land of the greed and the home of oil. Along with being a major superpower comes an insurmountable thirst for fossil fuels. Imperialist ideals and the corporate oil empire can bring stability and jobs but heavy costs also arise. Numerous solutions have been tried, but without fixing the underlying problem more issues are inevitable. Our over-consumption has an incredible effect on our reliance on foreign oil. OPEC, the Organization of the Oil Producing Countries, has supplied Americans with a constant flow of both oil and jobs. Nevertheless, progression comes with high cost to our environment, in addition to pulling us into international involvements. Increasing the United States’ domestic oil production was just a safety net solution, when the real issue is our consumption problem. The removal of huge profits from war could help eliminate future entanglement abroad. Although indirect control over foreign petroleum supplies seems to bring economic stability to the oil hungry United States, the unnecessary international involvement and costs to do so could be avoided by stopping the greedy war machine and turning our focus to domestic renewable energy.
Petrochemicals are concoction items made from petroleum. Some synthetic mixes produced using petroleum are additionally acquired from other fossil energizes, such as, coal or normal gas, or renewable sources for example corn or sugar stick. The final commodities that are used in the petrochemical industry involve approximately 100 different types of spirits, gylcols, oxides, anhydrides, and other chemicals. Petroleum is an unpredictable blend of natural fluids that are alias raw petroleum and regular gas. These natural fluids are normally practice the ground and were shaped a scads of years ago. Raw petroleum is known to fluctuate from oilfield to oilfield in both shading and structure, from a light yellow low thickness fluid to overwhelming dark "treacle" textures.
In 1970 oil reserves became more scarce, leading to a decrease in production, while consumption continued to grow rapidly (Wright, R. T., & Boorse, D. F. 2011). In order to fill the gap between rising demand and falling supply of oil, the United States became more and more dependent on imported oil, primarily from Arab countries in the Middle East. Wright, R. T., & Boorse, D. F. (2011). As the U.S. and many other countries became highly industrialized nations, they became even more dependent on oil imports. With demand being higher than the actual amount of supply, prices kept rising, reaching a peak of $140 a barrel in 2008.
oil companies began to search for oil in countries overseas. Many began to see luck in the Middle East, Egypt, the North and Caspian Seas, West Africa, Western Canada, and South America. With the shift overseas, the pipeline industry began to construct major systems from the U.S. Gulf Coast and Western Canada to states in the Midwest, as well as from California to other West Coast states.
finding new ways to drill for oil and also refine it more efficiently to ensure that
Many early discoveries of oil have been noted in our history. Early settlers of the 16th
“We are too busy to stop and think about the daily consumption of oil and gas, but almost everything we use or do has been produced using petroleum.” (Menezes,2014). Not many can understand that you can almost take anything you use in an everyday life and trace it back to petroleum oil. It is a huge commodity and sometimes I would believe that it can be just as important as water.
Oil is an essential resource in the whole world. People use oil in a variety of ways. The world has used oil for many years and it will still use it as a basic commodity. Oil use can be traced back to 1850s. However, when Edwin Drake produced commercially usable quantities of crude oil from a 69-foot well in Pennsylvania in 1859, he marked a new period that considered oil as a valuable commodity. Oil prices have been inconsistent since 1859. The discoveries of more wells considerably lowered oil prices and made some oil barons abandon the industry. However, oil prices have increased over time because of several factors.
Petroleum engineering is the development and exploitation of crude/oil and natural gas. The foundation was established during the 1890s in California. This career was developed to correlate oil- producing zones and water zones from well to prevent large amounts of water from entering oil- produced zones.
The discovery of oil in Middle East in the late nineteenth century added a critical dimension to the region as major outside state powers employed military force to protect their newly acquired interests in the Middle East. The United States efforts to secure the flow of oil have led to their ever-increasing involvement in the Middle East’s political affairs and ongoing power struggles. By the end of the twentieth century, safeguarding the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf had become one of the most important functions of the U.S. military. The close relationship between the United States and the Saudi royal family was formed in the final months of World War II, when U.S. leaders sought to ensure preferential access to Saudi’s petroleum. The U.S. link with Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region has demonstrated to be greatly beneficial to both parties, yet it has also led to ever deepening U.S. involvement in regional politics.