Fossil Fuels Petroleum & Natural Gas

1. Fossil Fuels Petroleum & Natural Gas

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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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)

8. 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

9. 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:

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. Types of Petroleum Traps (A) A simple fold trap (B) fossilized coral reef (C) fault trap (D) salt dome

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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

18. Proven World Reserves Crude oil and natural gas reserves as of 2002

19. 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

20. U.S. Oil Supplies The U.S. originally had about 10% of all the world’s 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

21. Proven U.S. Reserves

22. 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

23. 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

24. 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

25. Burning Gas at the Well Head Note the bright lights in the Gulf

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

27. 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

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

29. 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

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

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

32. 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

33. 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

34. 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

35. 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

36. 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

37. 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

38. Oil and Water Don’t 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

39. Oil and Water Don’t 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

40. Oil and Water Don’t 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

41. Oil and Animals Don’t Mix Oil is toxic to marine life, causes water-birds to drown when their feathers become coated and decimates fish and shell fish populations

42. Oil and Animals Don’t Mix Feathers can be cleaned of oil using soap and water, but it is very traumatic to the bird The survival rate is low

43. 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

44. 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

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

46. 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

47. 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