Fossil Fuels

Petroleum & Natural Gas

U.S. Energy Consumption

The U.S. is the number one consumer of energy
in the world and that consumption is rising

BTU
In the United States, the term BTU or Btu
(British thermal unit) is used to describe the
energy content of fuels
A BTU is defined as the amount of heat
required to raise the temperature of one
pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit
143 BTU is required to melt a pound of ice

BTU
One quadrillion BTU is:
1,000,000,000,000,000 BTU
That is a 1 followed by 15 zeros
It would take over 31 million years to
count to a quadrillion at the rate of one
number per second
But we are talking
about 100 quadrillion

U.S. Energy Consumption

The U.S. produces a staggering amount of
energy per year, and over 80% of that energy
comes from the fossil fuels: coal, natural gas
and oil

Oil and Natural Gas

Petroleum or crude oil, is not a single chemical

compound
Liquid petroleum, or oil, comprises a variety of
liquid hydrocarbon compounds, which are made
up of long molecular strings of carbon and
hydrogen
There are also a variety of
gaseous hydrocarbons,
collectively called natural
gas, of which the
compound methane (CH4)
is the most common

How is Petroleum Created?

Most geologists believe that crude oil and
natural gas are the product of compression
and heating of ancient organic materials over
long geological time
According to this theory, oil is formed from the
preserved remains of prehistoric zooplankton
and algae which have settled to the ocean
bottom in large quantities under anoxic
conditions (no oxygen)

How is Petroleum Created?

Over geological time this organic matter,
mixed with mud, is buried under heavy
layers of sediment
As burial continues, the pressure and the
temperature both increase, and chemical
changes begin to occur
The large, complex organic molecules are
slowly broken down into long chains of
hydrocarbon molecules, which have the
consistency of asphalt

How is Petroleum Created?

Specifically, the organic molecules change
into a waxy material known as kerogen, which
is found in various oil shales around the world
Such as below:

How is Petroleum Created?

With time and if the kerogen is subjected to more
heat, it is further changed into liquid and
gaseous hydrocarbons in a process known as
catagenesis
An oil geologist would say, the petroleum
matures, successively changing from heavy
long hydrocarbon molecules into light simple
gas and oil molecules
The thick liquids become progressively thinner
and more valuable

How is Petroleum Created?

Most of the maturation process occurs between
50o to 100o C (120o to 210o F)
At higher temperatures the hydrocarbon converts
to methane gas

Oil and Gas Migration

We want to extract the oil
But the majority of the
petroleum source rocks
are fine-grained
sedimentary rocks of low
permeability
The petroleum is spread
throughout the rock and it
is hard and uneconomical
to extract large quantities
of oil or gas quickly

Oil and Gas Migration

To become economical,
two things need to
happen:
The gas and/or oil must
migrate out of the source
rocks into more
permeable rocks, which is
called the reservoir rock
And eventually, a large quantity must become
concentrated and confined into a petroleum trap
beneath an impermeable layer called a cap rock

Types of Petroleum Traps

(A) A simple fold trap (B) fossilized coral reef
(C) fault trap
(D) salt dome

Hydrocarbon Uses
A given oil field may contain a variety of
hydrocarbon compounds and these different
compounds have different uses
Oil, gas and methane can all be found together

The Time Factor

The amount of time it takes to create petroleum
is not precisely known
However, petroleum is not found in rock that is
younger than 1 or 2 million years old
So, this is a slow process which takes million
of years
This means that we are using up oil much
much faster than it can be replaced by nature
We have essentially a finite supply of oil, then it
will be gone

Supply and Demand

Oil is commonly discussed in quantities of
barrels, where one barrel equal 42 gallons
Worldwide, over 500 billion barrels of oil has
been consumed
Unfortunately, half of that consumption
occurred over the past 25 years
The estimated proven oil reserves are about
1 trillion barrels
Or 50 years at the current rate of use

Proven World Reserves

Crude oil and natural gas reserves as of 2002

Proven World Reserves

Like other resources, petroleum sources are
very unevenly spread around the world
For example, high-tech, densely-populated
Japan has no oil, and must import 100% of the
oil it needs

U.S. Oil Supplies

The U.S. originally had about 10% of all the
worlds oil supply
The U.S. has consumed over 200 billion
barrels of oil
We currently consume about 7 billion barrels
a year
For the past three decades we have been
discovering new oil in the U.S. as fast as we
were consuming

Proven U.S. Reserves

Declining Yields
For land or offshore,
the average yield
from producing
wells in the U.S. is
declining, from a
peak of 18.6 barrels
per well per day in
1972 to 10.9 barrels
in 2000

Imported oil
More than half of the oil consumed by the U.S.
has been imported
Principle sources were Saudi Arabia, Venezuela,
Canada and Mexico

U.S. Natural Gas Use

The supply and demand picture for natural
gas is similar to that for oil
Natural gas provides about 25% of the energy
used in the U.S.
The U.S. has 200 trillion cubic feet of proven
reserves
But U.S. reserves are now steadily declining
And we import 15%
of our natural gas

Burning Gas at the Well Head

Note the bright lights in the Gulf

Strategic Petroleum Reserve

The Strategic
Petroleum
Reserve was
established
in 1977 to
store about
550 million
barrels of oil

Strategic Petroleum Reserve

It was to hold
a 115 day
supply
But daily use
has steadily
increased and
the current
supply will
only last 60
days

Hubbards Peak
M. King Hubbard was an oil man, who predicted
30 years ago that oil production would follow a
bell curve

Future Prospects
Many people think that as oil
prices soar, there will be
increased exploration and
discovery of new reserves
There is a finite amount of
petroleum in the ground and
we have found most of it
Two-thirds of new exploratory
wells come up dry
The days of the gushers are
over

Future Prospects
It is very expensive to
drill an exploratory oil
well on land
$2 to $20 million
dollars per well

Future Prospects
The costs for drilling offshore are substantially
higher, easily over $100 million
Deep water wells are currently too expensive

Enhanced Oil Recovery

Some of the first oils wells were
gushers, where the oil behaved like
water in an artesian well
Extracting oil using no techniques
beyond pumping is called primary
recovery
This will only remove part of the oil
deposit, usually a third or much less
However, on the average, two-thirds of
the oil is left in the ground

Secondary Recovery
There are many secondary recovery techniques
that allow addition oil to be extracted
When flow falls off, water can be pumped into
the reservoir rock, filling empty pore space and
buoying up more oil
Or you can pump in steam
Or explosives can be set off in the oil zone,
fracturing the rock and increasing permeability
Or carbon dioxide gas can be pumped in

Secondary Recovery
Many oil experts feel that secondary recovery
may allow an additional 40% of the known oil
reserves to be extracted
All of these secondary recovery methods add
to the cost of oil extraction

Very Deep Natural Gas

Deep exploratory wells have provided evidence
that additional natural gas reserves may exist
at depth of several thousand meters
At those depths, any petroleum molecules
would have been broken down into natural gas
The gas is under tremendously high pressure
and is typically dissolved into fluids such as
saline brines
Estimation of reserves range from 150 trillion
to 2 quadrillion cubic feet

Very Deep Natural Gas

Special technologies will have be developed
to extract this deep gas
It is difficult and very expensive to drill down
into this high-pressure environment
Plus the saline brine represents a serious
environmental problem
The gas is under such
pressure that it will
gush out of the wells

Oil Spills on land

In general, oil spills on land
are small and confined
Pipe line ruptures, train
wreaks, tanker truck
accidents and illegal waste
dumping are the most
common sources of spill
This spill in Siberia was
burned off, but that creates
airborne oil-smoke pollution

Oil and Water Dont Mix

It is estimated that 600,000 tons of oil per year
naturally escapes from permeable rocks into
the oceans
The news concentrates on major spills, but
most oil spills are small, but in the course of
a year, they can add up
The U.S. Coast Guard reports that there are
about 10,000 oil spills in U.S. waters each
year, totaling 15 to 25 million gallons

Oil and Water Dont Mix

When an oil spill occurs at sea, the oil, being
less dense than water, floats
The lightest, most volatile hydrocarbons start
to evaporate immediately, causing air pollution
Over several
months, sunlight
and bacteria action,
can destroy up to
85% the oil, leaving
thick asphalt lumps
that can persist for
many months

Oil and Water Dont Mix

If a spill is small, it can be contained by floating
barriers, and the oil skimmed off of the surface
Chalk, wood shavings and peat moss have
been used to soak up oil
In big spills,
detergent is added
to the oil to speed
up decomposition,
but detergent is
toxic to fish and
birds

Oil and Animals Dont Mix

Oil is toxic to marine life, causes water-birds
to drown when their feathers become coated
and decimates fish and shell fish populations

Oil and Animals Dont Mix

Feathers can be cleaned of oil using soap and
water, but it is very traumatic to the bird
The survival rate is low

IXTOC 1 Oil Well

Ixtoc I was an exploratory oil well platform in the
Gulf of Mexico, about 600 miles south of Texas
On June 3, 1979, the well suffered a blowout and
became the largest unintentional oil well spill in
history

IXTOC 1 Oil Well

The oil caught on fire
and the drilling
platform collapsed
140 million gallons of
oil spilled out into the
Gulf
The well was finally
capped on March 23,
1980

La Brea Tar Pits

The Rancho La Brea Tar pits are a famous series
of natural tar (asphalt) pits in Los Angeles

La Brea Tar Pits

Pools of water covers the sticky tar, and for

thousands of years, animals who tried to drink
the water became trapped in the tar, creating a
treasure trove of fossils
The predators who fed on the trapped prey, also
became trapped

La Brea Tar Pits

Since 1901, over one million bones of Pleistocene
animals have been removed by paleontologists,
including saber-toothed cat and giant sloth