contents

Definitions
Formation of oil and gas
The science of searching
Extraction of oil and gas
Moving oil and gas
Refining
Useful products
Production and consumption of oil and gas in

Pakistan

ENERGY
ENGINEERING
(OIL & GAS)

Crude Oil Definition

A mixture of hydrocarbons that exists in liquid

phase in natural underground reservoirs and

remains liquid at atmospheric pressure after
passing through surface separating facilities.
Depending upon the characteristics of the crude
stream, it may also include.
1. Small amounts of hydrocarbons that exist in
gaseous phase in natural underground
reservoirs but are liquid at atmospheric
pressure after being recovered from oil well
(casing head) gas in lease separators.

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2. Small amounts of nonhydrocarbons produced
with
the oil, such as sulfur and various metals.
3. Liquid hydrocarbons produced from tar sands,
oil sands and oil shale. Liquids produced at natural
gas processing plants are excluded. Crude oil is
refined to produce a wide array of petroleum
products, including heating oils; gasoline, diesel
and jet fuels; lubricants; asphalt; ethane, propane,
and butane; and many other products used for
their energy or chemical content.

Formation of oil and

gas
The petroleum oil that becomes gasoline and many

other useful products wouldnt exist without tiny

plants, algae and bacteria, which settled to the
bottom of the sea as they died millions of years ago.
Theres no oxygen under the earths crust, so the
organic matter in the sediment changed into a
substance scientists call kerogen. And when the
temperatures rose to 110 Celsius or higher the
kerogen gradually changed into oil. Under hotter
conditions it changed into natural gas. The process
takes at least a million years.

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Crude oil is a complex mixture of

hydrocarbons. In other words, it is made up of

hydrogen, carbon and traces of other
substances. Its texture varies, but it is
generally liquid. Natural gas is mainly made
up of the chemical compound methane. It is
gaseous, or lighter than air.

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If the story ended there, oil and gas might

never have become the global energy sources

they are today. The deposits would be so
scattered that we would have almost no
chance of extracting them in usable amounts.
Even after oil has formed in the rock, pressure
continues to rise, squeezing the oil out or
upwards through rocks that have more pores,
or spaces, within them.

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All oil moves like this. Some of it eventually

reaches the surface and seeps out naturally into

land or water, but most of it eventually comes up
against a layer of rock that it cant move through.
This impermeable rock forms a seal or trap, and
slowly, very slowly, the oil builds up. As it does, it
forms a reservoir.
Reservoirs are rock formations that hold oil, natural
gas or both within their pores, like a fossilized
sponge. Reservoirs can be massive. Some may be
as large as London, Hong Kong or New York

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If only finding them was as easy as mapping a

city. Rocks also move over millions of years.

Their formations can be extremely complex.
This makes oil and gas reservoirs extremely
difficult to find.

The science of searching

Forming an educated guess
There may be no more unexplored frontiers
on earth, but deep inside the earth there is
plenty that we dont yet know.
Oil companies have a range of technologies to
help them locate oil and gas reservoirs deep
beneath land and sea. But the search remains
a complex business. Success is never certain.

Improving the odds

In the early days of oil exploration, oil

companies and prospectors really had no idea

what they were looking for. They focused their
search on areas near seepages, where oil
bubbled up naturally in pools. Then they sunk
a drill and hoped for the best.
The rate of success has improved greatly
since those early discoveries, from 10% or
less to more like 50%. New technologies
developed which may improve the odds.

Drilling
Drilling is still the only sure way to find out

whether theres oil or gas down there. But

drilling is expensive. Each project can cost
tens of millions of dollars or more. So before
we drill, we do as much planning as possible.
And that can take years.

The geologists eye

We start with what we can see. Both

geologists and geophysicists provide crucial

insights at this stage in the exploration
process. Geologists look at what rocks are
made of and the formations they make in the
earth. Geophysicists use physical
characteristics, such as magnetic and
gravitational properties, to guess the type and
shape of subsurface rocks.

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Aerial photography from aircraft and satellites

can be revealing. The same tectonic shifts that

formed mountains and other topographical
features above the earths surface also shaped
the rock formations down below. To the trained
eye, these photographs can say a lot about
what lies beneath the soil.
Aircraft can measure the gravitational pull over
an area. Even small gravitational differences
can reveal large clues about the density of
underlying rocks.

Using sound waves to get the

picture

But the most powerful tool available to us is

the acoustic survey. Geophysicists use air

guns to fire acoustic pulses down through the
rock. The sound waves bounce back like
echoes, revealing different layers and depths.
This data gives our experts the information
they need to map reservoirs and identify
whether theyre filled with oil, gas or merely
water.

Safety first

Because crude oil and natural gas are hot and

highly pressurized, we have to take great care to

control pressure during the drilling process.
Everyone involved in a drilling project undergoes
rigorous safety training. Risks are assessed at
every step. Increasingly we plan exploration
projects remotely, using data instead of site
visits, which means fewer employees and
contractors are exposed to potential dangers on
the actual rig.

Extracting oil and gas

After weve established that there are large

quantities of oil or gas (or both) at a drilling

location, this site is known as a field. The next
step is to plan and build a production facility,
taking environmental, social and logistical
factors into account.

Working with local economies

Using new technology
Over the decades-long lifespan of most production

facilities, chances are new technologies will help us

reach deeper and deeper into reservoirs, helping us
to extract more of the resources within it.
Is the world running out of oil and gas? Not
immediately. By most estimates, todays known
reserves would last for at least another 40 years at
current usage levels. In other words, these estimates
dont take new discoveries into account. Meanwhile,
new technologies are helping us tap large amounts
of oil and gas that were once considered
unreachable.

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Not long ago drilling only went in one

direction. Down. Now we can drill at any

angle, including straight out horizontal. At
Wamsutter gas field in Wyoming, USA,
horizontal drilling has helped us reach large
amounts of natural gas that were previously
trapped within rock formations too tight to let
the gas flow naturally.

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Here are a few other recent and developing

innovations that may help us get more oil and

gas from known reservoirs:

Fracturing the rocks

By exerting the right level and type of

pressure into rocks with tight pores, we can

cause fine cracks that stimulate a freer flow of
natural gas deposits that would previously
have remained trapped there.

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Injecting water
Injecting water into a reservoir to flush out

some of the remaining oil trapped in rock

pores is a long-established technique. Using
water with a lower salt content, a process BP
developed and owns, appears to boost oil
recovery by as much as 40%.

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Injecting CO2into wells
Injecting natural gas is one way of flushing

more oil out of a well. Tests have shown that

carbon dioxide, which can be separated from oil
and other hydrocarbons during hydrogen power
production, may be an effective substitute.
Putting this CO2back into the reservoir means
it wont be released into the atmosphere, where
it would add to the greenhouse gases believed
to cause global warming.

Moving oil and gas

Most of the worlds known oil and natural gas

supplies are a long way away from the places

where these resources are the most in
demand. Even land-based production facilities
may be many kilometers from the closest
refinery or distribution terminal.
We transport crude oil in two main ways:
pipelines and shipping.

Oil transport

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The choice depends on each projects

logistics, economics and location, as well as

environmental considerations. Meanwhile,
arranging to get large amounts of oil, gas and
energy products to all the places where they
are needed is a steady and demanding job in
itself.

Making fuels and products

In its raw form, crude oil is practically useless.

Before it has any real value it must be

processed into products like gasoline, motor
oils, bitumen and the chemicals that make
adhesives, cosmetics and other useful
products.
We do this processing at our refineries.

How refining works

Transforming crude oil with

chemistry
Refining is a chemical process. So to really understand

how it works we need to know a little basic chemistry.

Crude oil is mainly made up of hydrocarbons chains of
carbon atoms and hydrogen atoms. The chemical bonds
that link these chains together can be broken up and
linked in different ways. In fact, the hydrocarbon
compound is the most versatile on the chemical charts. It
can make an estimated 2.5 million possible combinations.
Longer, heavier molecules can be transformed into lighter
ones and vice versa.

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But crude oil is far from pure. It can also

contain substances that need to be removed

because they would damage an engine or
other machinery. In the refinery, we remove
sulphur, nitrogen, oxygen, water and other
trace substances and then dispose of them
safely.

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Vaporizing the crude oil
The first step in separating oil into useful products involves

heating it to a about 350 Celsius. It is then pumped into a

fractioning tower.
If you have ever seen an oil refinery from a distance, these
are the tall, slender towers that jut up above the horizon.
The vaporized oil rises up the tower through trays with holes
in them. As the gas cools, its components condense back
into several distinct liquids. Lighter liquids like kerosene and
naptha, a product used in chemicals processing, collect near
the top of the tower, while heavier ones like lubricants and
waxes fall through weirs to trays at the bottom.

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Demand for gasoline is high, so we use the

flexibility of the hydrocarbon compound to

turn some of the heavier components from
the fractioning tower into gasoline. Reforming
and alkylation are two such processes.
Cracking is another. It breaks large
hydrocarbon molecules down into smaller
ones, making the end product runnier

Fractionating tower

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After distillation, gasoline and other engine

fuels go on for further processing elsewhere in

the refinery. They will leave the refinery by
pipeline or truck, having been transformed
from a raw material into fuels with marketable
octane ratings and specific engine properties.

Refined products
One resource, thousands of uses
The vast majority of the crude oil that goes

through one of our refineries leaves it as

gasoline. But the range of products we
produce is much wider than automotive fuels.
In fact, these products touch almost every
aspect of modern life.

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Here are a few of our refined products:

Liquefied petroleum gas

(LPG)
Together propane and butane are known as LPG, which is stored

in metal containers under pressure as a liquid. It is used for

heating and cooking, especially when portability is needed in
camping stoves, for example, or on boats.

Kerosene (paraffin)
Kerosene was the first major product to be refined from crude oil

in the late 19th century. At that time it was mainly used for
lighting in oil lamps. Today its main use is as jet aircraft fuel.

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Lubricating oils
Without lubricants, the world might not stop

spinning but everything on it would grind to a

halt. Lubricants have thousands of uses, from
fixing squeaky doors to oiling industrial machines
and automotive engines.

Heavy fuel oils

These are used in large industrial boilers, in

power stations for example, and to raise steam to

drive turbines on ships.

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Bitumen
This is the heaviest product from the refinery.

Essentially its what is left after everything else

has been removed from the crude oil. When
heated, it can be used in road construction and as
a waterproofing material for roofs.

Waxes
Wax is a by-product of the refining process. It is

used to make candles, electrical insulation and

waterproof coverings for food cartons.

Selling fuels and

products
At service stations, ports and airports

around the world, fuels and motor oils

help keep the world in motion.

References
http://

www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/about-bp/what
-we-do/finding-oil-and-gas/how-oil-and-gas-f
orm.html.
http://
www.indexmundi.com/energy.aspx?country=p
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http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?
c=pk&v=136