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1、Part I Before DrillingLesson 1 How It All BeganOil.Petroleum.Black gold.Formed under the surface of the earth millions of years ago, man has long been aware of the existence of oil. Yet, it has only been in the last hundred years or so that man has fully realized its value and usefulness. In hardly
2、more than a century, our modern society has become totally dependent upon the men and women and dreams and realities of the petroleum industry. Today we depend upon petroleum products not only for transportation, heating, and generating electricity, but also for fertilizers and fabrics, plastics and
3、 pantyhose. munitions and medicines, paints and pesticides, and thousands of other items we take for granted every day.Other fuels, such as coal and uranium, would not be available without the diesel fuel and petroleum-based explosives required to mine, transport, and process them, or the billions o
4、f cubic feet of natural gas necessary to manufacture the Portland cement needed to build the generating stations they fuel. In short, as the past decade has painfully taught us, the worlds economy is based not on gold or political philosophies, but rather on the price of a barrel of crude.Man first
5、became acquainted with petroleum through natural “seeps,” or spots on the earths surface where shallow deposits of crude oiland often natural gasoozed upwards into pits, creeks, and marshes, or along beaches and bays. Petroleum, as the “rock oil”, was called by the ancients, is referred to not only
6、in the Bible, but also in mans earliest recorded history. Oil seeps and bitumen pits furnished the pitch and asphalt used in the mortar that built the Tower of Babel, the walls of Ninevah, and Solomons temple. It was from “slime pits” near the Dead Sea, that the Egyptians obtained the bitumen they u
7、sed to embalm their dead. In 3000 B.C. the Sumerians were using oil-burning lamps, a practice adopted in Greece around 250 B.C. In the East, sometime after 100 B.C., the Chinese were digging wells hundreds of feet deep to obtain salt water from which they extracted the sodium chloride to season and
8、preserve their food. Occasionally these wells also produced natural gas, which the Chinese learned to use not only for heating and cooking, but also to pipe through bamboo tubes and burn to heat the well water to hasten its evaporation.By 615 A.D., the Japanese were digging wells nearly 1,000 ft dee
9、p in attempts to obtain “burning water,” a practice which was also occurring in Burma and India at about the same time. And, along the banks of the Caspian Sea, men were digging shallow wells by hand to obtain oil to light their lamps. As man found more and more of this strange substance, he slowly
10、began to learn that it could be used in many ways. In 671 A.D., Kallinikos of Byzantium invented a primitive missile which he called Greek Fire. which carried an incendiary payload composed of petroleum, sulfur. resin, and rock salt, which the Greeks used against their enemies, the Arabs, during the
11、 siege of Constantinople. The Greeks also used petroleum in war at sea, pouring it on the water and igniting it, a fearsome weapon against wooden ships. Even earlier, the legionnaires of ancient Rome won a battle by setting oil-soaked pigs aflame and driving them into the ranks of the approaching en
12、emy.Gradually, the use of petroleum began to spread across parts of Asia and Europe. But, in order for any new industry to come about, three factors must be present: a widely demonstrated need for the product provided, a reliable and economical source of supply, and an established market price that
13、would guarantee a return on investment sufficient to overcome the risks inherent in any new venture. Thus, the time was not yet right for the birth of the worldwide petroleum industry, and it would not be until the Europeans ventured west that the sleeping giant would begin to awaken.1.1 The New Wor
14、ldWhen the first explorers ventured into the New World, they found petroleum marshes as well as huge asphalt pools in Trinidad, Venezuela, and later, in California. As more and more adventurers made the long voyage across the Atlantic, they learned to come to these places, beach their sea-weary ship
15、s and caulk their leaks with boiled-down petroleum residues. Not only did this seal the hulls, it also protected them against teredos, small, worm-like marine mollusks that inhabit tropical waters and bore into wooden ships, destroying them. In the years to come, this practice of ship coating would
16、grow into an industry of its own and create one of the first economic demands for petroleum products.1.1.1 Latin AmericaThe Indians in what is now Mexico, called this tarry substance Chapapote, while in Venezuela and other parts of South America it was called Mene. The pre-Colombian peoples used cha
17、papote or menewhich had worked its way to the earths surfaceas medicine in the form of liniments and ointments, to coat footwear, boats, and roofing, as glue, for illumination. and as incense. In 1579, Commander Melcor de Alfaro Santa Cruz had written home to Spain describing the many uses of chapap
18、ote in Mexico, which included toothpaste and chewing gum. However. Venezuela may have become the worlds first petroleum exporting country when in 1539, several barrels of mene were shipped to Spain, apparently in response to an urgent request for a “miracle drug” to cure the painful gout afflicting
19、Emperor Charles . Rumors having reached the royal ears of the great medicinal powers attributed by the Indians to a mysterious substance found around Lake Maricaibo. Thus the origins of todays petroleum industry are closely entwined with the history of Latin America, and many Latin nations have cont
20、ributed to the industry that has changed the world.1.1.2 North AmericaLater, as Europeans penetrated the northern portion of the hemisphere, they found that the Indians from California to what is now Pennsylvania and Canada were also familiar with this strange black substance that came from within t
21、he earth, and had developed many practical uses for it. In southern California, they applied asphalt to baskets or cloth to make them waterproof. These baskets were used to carry water since they were not only lighter than pottery, but unbreakable as well. Asphalt was also used to caulk their boats
22、and waterproof their roofs. In 1788, Peter Pond, exploring western Canada in what is now Alberta, reported that the Cree Indians were using tar from the Athabasca River to caulk their canoes and also as medicine.Today, one of the most widely used skin ointments in the world is known in English as “I
23、ndian Petrolatum,” or, “petroleum jelly,” a scientific name derived from the Greek which obscures its American Indian invention, in making this nearly colorless gelatinous material of olefin hydrocarbons and methane, the Indians found one of the first practical uses of petroleum. They applied it to
24、human and animal skins to protect wounds, stimulate healing, and to keep the skin moist. They also used it to lubricate the moving parts of tools. Today, petroleum jelly has found its way to the most remote parts of the earth, including the Sahara where nomadic tribesmen smear it on their skin to pr
25、otect themselves from the relentless sun, dry wind, and pounding sand.The Indians to Pennsylvania used a number of open pits as oil wells, a fact noted by the white settlers of the Quaker State who, in the nineteenth century, not only launched the American petroleum industry from this spot. but in s
26、o doing, created the impetus that would move the world into the petroleum society.As the settlers began to move westward into the interior of this vast land, the need was not for oil, but, as had been the case in other parts of the world, for salt, so they could preserve their food for the long wint
27、er months. Those living in the Ohio Valley and the westward slope of the Alleghenies found they could drill wells through the rock down into subsurface brine deposits. When the brine was brought to the surface, it was boiled down and the resulting salt used to cure their meat.But some of these crude
28、, hand-drilled wells produced oil as well as salt. Since the oil contaminated the salt, it was considered a nuisance by the colonists who either drained it into nearby creeks or into sump pits where it was burned. However, plantation owner George Washington considered his Virginia estates “bitumen s
29、pring” to be of value. Harking back to the days of the Indian healers, a few entrepreneurs bottled this residue and sold it as a widely acclaimed “cure-all” through itinerant wagon shows and local druggists.1.1.3 The Search for LightSamuel M. Kier, a Pittsburgh druggist who owned some brine wells ne
30、ar Tarentum, Pennsylvania, was one of these. In addition to salt, Kiers wells also produced much petroleum. From this “useless” by-product. Kier bottled his oil, labeled it “Pennsylvania Rock Oil,” and advertised it far and wide. But, it failed to find a ready market. Undaunted, Kier then devised a
31、crude still to convert his petroleum into a lamp oil. His “rock oil” burned, but it had a bad odor, and produced a heavy, black smoke. Although Kier was not successful, suddenly the first birth pains of the oil industry were felt because man began to realize there was a widespread need for petroleum
32、. By mid-nineteenth century, the idea of popular education had spread widely; more and more people could read and write. And, there was more to read since this was also a great period of growth for the newly popular newspapers and magazines which were now beginning to be published for the masses ins
33、tead of for an elite few. But for the most part, the world was still largely an agrarian society. On farms, and in the cities which were becoming industrialized. people worked a minimum of twelve hours a day, or from dawn to dark. This made reading a leisure time activity, which had to be done at ni
34、ght, after the days labors were completed. Therefore, in order to read, people needed light. Light was also needed by the new factories of the Industrial Age if they were to be able to operate during the short and dark winter days and survive economically. Many used tallow candles which were both ex
35、pensive and ineffective, or, sperm oil from whales, which though relatively clean burning, was becoming more and more expensive because even then the great herds of whales had been hunted to the point of extinction. In both America and Europe a search was on for a source of light that could be manuf
36、actured to sell at a reasonable price, burn cleanly, and provide effective illumination.In a few large cities, plants had been built to process artificial gas from coal or to furnish natural gas from wells located in the towns themselves. Gas lights illuminated the streets at night, and indoors “jet
37、s”thousands of times brighter than candiesnot only brightened homes, but also made the forerunners of the modem factory possible for the first time. Gaslight quickly became enormously popular, but the piping was crude and expensive to install, which meant that gas was available only in metropolitan
38、areas. So the search, including attempts to produce a light source from petroleum, continued.In 1849 ,James Young, a Scotsman, obtained a patent for processing cannel coal (or more likely, cannel shale which is prevalent in Scotland), which he distilled into what he called coal oil. It became popula
39、r almost immediately, and the worlds first refining industry sprang up in Britain as Young issued licenses on his patent for the production of coal oil in both Great Britain and the United States.1.1.4 CanadaA brilliant and innovative Canadian, was responsible for the next step in the birthing. Abra
40、ham Gesner, a medical doctor who was also an amateur geologist and self-taught chemist from Nova Scotia, began experimenting in the 1840s with producing lamp oils from both asphalt and coal. Using a process similar to Youngs, he became the first in North America to distill a hydrocarbon into lamp fu
41、el. In 1853, he moved his operation to New York and began producing coal oil. The following year he introduced a new product called “Kerosene,” from the Greek words for oil and wax. Even though coal oil and the early kerosene were smelly, smoked badly, and cost dearly, they immediately became far mo
42、re popular than whale oil, which had risen in price to $2.50 per gallon, which placed it far beyond the reach of most consumers. Gesner began to issue licenses under his American patent, and by 1860, there were more than 70 plants in the United States producing an estimated 23,000 gals of coal oil p
43、er year from natural asphalts, soft coal, and shale.All of this would last only a few short years however, for it was to be kerosine refined from petroleum, not coal oil, that would light the world. Up until the mid-1850s all crude oil had either been skimmed from seeps or produced as an unwanted by
44、-product of brine wells, and was considered by many to be good only as a medicine show novelty. But two brothers in a tiny village in Canada West, as Ontario was called in 1854, would change all that and in so doing, change the world. Henry and Charles Nelson Tripp of Enniskillen Township on the nor
45、th shore of Lake Ontario, a metropolis inhabited by 37 settlers. 34 cows. and 16 hogs, founded the worlds first incorporated oil company, International Mining and Manufacturing. Their interests were not in lamp oil, but in possible industrial uses for the black, tar-like substance from gum beds loca
46、ted on their property. In 1850 a chemist with the Canadian Geological Survey had pointed out that the gum had possible commercial use as paving material, a sealant for ship bottoms, and as raw material for the manufacture of illuminating gas. By 1854 they were digging the bitumen by hand, and boilin
47、g it down in open cast iron kettles. Their major trust was to sell their product for paving and for marine use as ship coating. Even though the Hamilton Gas Company reported that gas made from the bitumen produced far more illumination than the gas produced from coal, the Tripps ignored this market
48、and by 1856 their company failed and was forced to sell its gum beds. It was to the buyer of their 600 ac of potential oil land that fame as the founder of the North American oil industry would come.James Miller Williams was a carriage maker from Hamilton, Ontario. In 1857 he set up a simple refiner
49、y on Black Creek and set out to drill for oil, correctly assuming that if he penetrated below the surface of the asphalt beds he would find more oil. His first well was abandoned after the pipe broke off at 27 ft, but in 1858 he successfully produced oil from a depth of 49 ft. Whereas the Tripps had mined the bitumen from its surface beds, Williams began pumping crude oil from a reservoir beneath them, which he then refined into lamp oil. In I860 he reincorporated as the Canadian Oil Company. This was North A
