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petroleum refining is the separation of petroleum into fractions and the sub sequent treating of these fraction s to yield market able products. In fact, a refinery is essentially a group of manufacturing plants which vary in number with the variety of products produced. Refinery process es must be selected and products manufactured to give a balanced operation in which petroleum is converted into a variety of products in amounts that are in accord with the demand for each. For example, the manufacture of products from the lower-boiling portion of petroleum automatically produces a certain amount of higher- boiling components. If the latter cannot be sold as, say, heavy fuel oil, these products will accumulate until refinery storage facilities are full. To prevent the occurrence of such a situation, the refinery must be flexible and be able to change operations as needed. This usually means more process es: thermal processes to change an excess of heavy fuel oil into more gasoline with coke as the residual product, or a vacuum distillation process to separate the heavy oil into lubricating oil stocks and asphalt. The gas and gasoline cuts form the lower-boiling products and are usually more valuable than the higher-boiling fractions and provide gas (liquefied petroleum gas), naphtha, aviation fuel, motor fuel and feedstocks, for the petrochemical industry. Naphtha, a precursor to gasoline and solvents, is extracted from both the light and middle range of distillate cuts and is also used as a feedstock for the petrochemical industry. The middle distillates refer to products from the middle boiling range of petroleum and include kerosene, diesel fuel, distillate fuel oil, and light gas oil. Waxy distillate and lower boiling lubricating oils are sometimes included in the middle distillates. The remainder of the crude oil includes the higher-boiling lubricating oils, gas oil, and residuum (the nonvolatile fraction of the crude oil). The residuum can also produce heavy lubricating oils and waxes, but is more often sued for asphalt production. The complexity of petroleum is emphasized insofar as the actual proportions of light, medium and heavy fractions vary significantly from one crude oil to another. In the early days of the twentieth century, refining processes were developed to extract kerosene for lamps. Any other products were considered unusable and were usually discarded.Thus, first refining processes were developed to purify, stabilize, and improve the quality of kerosene. However, the invention of the internal combustion engine led (at about the time of World War I) to a demand for gasoline, for use in increasing quantities as a motor fuel for cars and trucks. This demand on the lower-boiling products increased, particularly when the market for aviation fuel developed. Thereafter, refining methods had to be constantly adapted and improved to meet the quality requirements and needs of car and aircraft engines.

The most important gaseous fuel used in the first century of industrial development was town gas. This was produced by two processes: pyrolysis, in which discontinuously operating ovens produce coke and a gas with a relatively high heating value (20,000-23,000 kJ/m3), and the water gas process, in which coke is converted into a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide by another discontinuous method (approx. 12,000 kJ/m3 or medium Btu gas).Until the end of the 1920s the only gases that could be produced in a continuous process were blast furnace gas and producer gas. Producer gas was obtained by partial oxidation of coke with humidified air. However, both gases have a low heating value (3500-6000 kJ/m3, or low Btu gas) and could therefore only be used in the immediate vicinity of their production. Gas processing consists of separating all of the various hydrocarbons and fluids from pure natural gas. Major transportation pipelines usually impose restrictions on the makeup of the natural gas that is allowed into the pipeline. That means that before the natural gas can be transported it must be purified. While the ethane, propane, butane, and pentanes must be removed from natural gas, this does not mean that they are all waste products. Gas processing is necessary to ensure that the natural gas intended for use is as clean and pure as possible, making it the clean burning and environmentally sound energy choice. Thus, natural gas, as it is used by consumers, is much different from the natural gas that is brought from underground up to the wellhead. Although the processing of natural gas is in many respects less complicated than the processing and refining of crude oil, it is equally as necessary before its use by end users. The natural gas used by consumers is composed almost entirely of methane. However, natural gas found at the wellhead, although still composed primarily of methane, is by no means as pure.

Debates on energy policy, environmental regulation, and global warming start with the largely unquestioned assumption that the present heat and power system is economically optimal. It then follows that any actions to change the energy system to achieve other goals, such as lowering pollution, will raise the cost of energy services and damage the economy. It then further follows that the only way to have affordable, clean energy is to invent and develop new technology. This view is widespread. President George W. Bush, in a major speech on climate change said, "Technology is the ticket" (2005). But the energy system is not optimal, and society does not need to play off income against cleaner energy.Industry regularly ignores energy saving projects with one to two-year paybacks. The resulting opportunities should be fertile ground for third party power entrepreneurs seeking to profit by outsourcing industrial energy supply. But regulations and regulators, bent on protecting electric distribution monopolies, largely compromise the economics of such projects. The failure to optimize U.S. power systems is principally caused by power industry governance, which consists of a vast tapestry of rules and regulations that either was based on yesterday's technology choices or was handcrafted by electricity distribution utilities to preserve their wires monopoly.Deregulation has opened some parts of the industry to competition, which has worked, but only in the ways the rules reward. The Energy Policy Act of 1992 opened wholesale electric generation competition, i.e., for power sold to the grid, and this induced electric power companies to improve labor and capital utilization efficiencies. The U.S. power industry employed 75 persons per 100MW of generating capacity in 1990. By 2004 the utility industry reduced that number by 52% to 39 persons per 100MW of generating capacity. The load factor for all nuclear units rose from 66% in 1990 to 88% in 2003, while coal fired load factors rose from 59 to 72%. During the same period, the industry only increased its coal and nuclear electric generating capacity by 5 GW, or a 1% increase (407GW in 1990). But the power output from these coal and nuclear plants increased by 26%

The concern is reinforced due to Europe's dependence on oil and gas from other regions. In addition, many commentators fear domestic oil and gas resource depletion will produce significant supply scarcities in the short term, i.e., well before 2020. Thus, the purpose of this analysis is to address the subject by estimating conventional and unconventional oil and gas supply cost curves for the region.Recent years have seen increasing attention being paid to the broad issues of energy security and climate change, which are of the utmost importance for the European Union and its member states. Energy security has become a heavily discussed topic due to rising energy demand worldwide, increasing import dependence in many European countries, geopolitical tensions and conflicts, the globalization of formerly regional markets, and the need for a regulatory and policy response. In the period leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, the vast majority of investors were too optimistic about the future. Property prices would keep rising; the world economy, turbo-charged by globalization, would keep growing; only blue skies lay ahead. Increasing share prices, and the growth in lending reflected these positive expectations. Eventually the reality of mounting mortgage defaults chipped away at the positive mood and was reinforced by the failures of some over-exposed funds and institutions like Bear Sterns. In late 2008, the failure of Lehman Brothers delivered the final nail in the coffin to any remaining optimism and darkness overwhelmed the financial system. Share prices crashed, lending fell, and financial companies previously thought to be safe got into trouble. Suddenly, no one knew what or whom to trust. Without the lifeblood of confidence, the financial system ground to a halt. Only unprecedented intervention by many governments- and the infusion of trillions of dollars, euro, yen, pounds, and other currencies conjured up by central banks-saved the day and pulled the world back from the brink of a new Great Depression.

A revolutionary invention in 1909 greatly increased the depth of wells that could be drilled. The original drilling technology, adapted from water well drilling, was to drop a heavy "bit" onto the rock. The rock would shatter and be periodically removed by a scoop. This method is slow, inefficient and not feasible below a thousand meters or so. The far more efficient continuous hydraulic rotary drilling system used today was invented by Hughes Tool Co. c. 1900. It consisted of a rotary cutting tool at the bottom end of a pipe, which was rotated as a whole by an engine at the top. A lubricant was pumped down from above, both to cool the drill and to carry the cuttings back to the surface outside the pipe. This enabled the drill to operate continuously, except for pauses to add new sections of pipe at the top. Depth was virtually unlimited. The earliest forms of oil and gas wells were actually pits dug by hand. Numerous examples from 500 BCE to 1800 CE from Europe, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, and Japan are described by Owen. Well drilling appears to have originated in China, where a heavy cylindrical weight was used for impact drilling and bamboo was used for well casing. The target was brine for manufacture of salt, which was important for food preservation as well as flavoring and was a highly regulated commodity. Wells were 100 m deep by 600 BC and reached 1000 m deep by 1100 CE. Natural gas was initially a byproduct, although it was often used as a fuel for evaporating brine.Well drilling has gone through major developments of drilling methods to reach the modern method of rotary drilling. In this method, a drilling bit is attached to the bottom end of a string of pipe joints known as the drill¬ing string. The drilling string is rotated at the surface, causing rotation of the drilling bit. The rotation of the bit and the weight applied on it through the drilling string causes the crushing and cutting of the rock into small pieces (cuttings). To remove the cuttings from the hole, a special fluid, called the drilling fluid or the drilling mud, is pumped down through the drilling string, where it exists through nozzles in the bit as jets of fluid. This fluid cleans the bit from the cuttings and carries the cuttings to the surface through the annular space between the drilling string and the wall of the hole. At the surface, the mud is screened to remove the cuttings and is circulated back into the drilling string. The drilling operation is performed using huge and complex equipment known as the drilling rig.

One of the characteristics of oil in its early exploration and production has been the requirement of large capital investments for exploratory activity associated with unexplored fields surrounding new oil reserves, and costly development expenditures that are subsequently needed for extension and expanding of such fields once they were explored. Therefore, the evolution of the oil industry had not been and cannot be treated in a manner of a mom-and-pop enterprise in which capital has yet to turn into a well-developed process of concentration and centralization. On the other hand, in the late nineteenth century, Taylorism was just giving rise to standardization and thus automated assembly line mass production in need of capital on a scale beyond individual wealth. That is why oil was characterized by the assemblage of several financial syndicates for the venture of exploration in both the United States and abroad. And it is the minimum size of capital that in part plays a pivotal role in development of capitalist competition in oil and in other businesses. The genesis of hydrocarbon can be traced to colonial fusion of capitalistically developed and undeveloped parts of the world-a world whose overwhelming majority had not yet lived within capitalism proper.Exploration for petroleum originated in the latter part of the nineteenth century when geologists began to map land features that were favorable for the collection of oil in a reservoir. Of particular interest to geologists were outcrops that provided evidence of alternating layers of porous and impermeable rock. The porous rock (typically a sandstone, limestone, or dolomite) provides the reservoir for the petroleum while the impermeable rock (typically clay or shale) prevents migration of the petroleum from the reservoir.A basic rule of thumb in the upstream (or producing) sector of the oil and gas industry has been (and maybe still is in some circles of exploration technology) that the best place to find new crude oil or natural gas is near formations where it has already been found. The financial risk of doing so is far lower than that associated with drilling a rank wildcat hole in a prospective, but previously unproductive, area.you can get all the information about exploring oil and gas, economics, physics, and engineering information