Oil & Gas Introduction

Oil has been used for lighting purposes for many thousand years. In areas where oil is found in shallow reservoirs, seeps of crude oil or gas may naturally develop, and some oil could simply be collected from seepage or tar ponds. Historically, we know of tales of eternal fires where oil and gas seeps would ignite and burn. One example 1000 B.C. is the site where the famous oracle of Delphi would be built, and 500 B.C. Chinese were using natural gas to boil water.
But it was not until 1859 that “Colonel” Edwin Drake drilled the first successful oil well, for the sole purpose of finding oil.
The Drake Well was located in the middle of quiet farm country in north-western Pennsylvania, and began the international search for and industrial use of petroleum.
Photo: Drake well museum collection, Titusville, PA
These wells were shallow by modern standards, often less than 50 meters, but could give quite large production. In the picture from the Tar farm, Oil Creek Valley, the Phillips well on the right was flowing initially at 4000 barrels per day in October 1861, and the Woodford well on the left came in at 1500 barrels per day in July 1862. The oil was collected in the wooden tank in the foreground. Note the many different sized barrels in the background, at this time, barrel size was not yet standardized, which made terms like “oil is selling at $5 per barrel” very confusing (today a barrel is 159 liters, see units at the back). But even in those days, overproduction was an issue to be avoided. When the “Empire well” was completed in September 1861, it gave 3,000 barrels per day, flooding the market, and the price of oil plummeted to 10 cents a barrel.
Soon, oil had replaced most other fuels for mobile use. The automobile industry developed at the end of the 19th century, and quickly adopted the fuel. Gasoline engines were essential for designing successful aircraft. Ships driven by oil could move up to twice as their coal fired counterparts, a vital military advantage. Gas was burned off or left in the ground.
Despite attempts at gas transportation as far back as 1821, it was not until after the World War II that welding techniques, pipe rolling, and metallurgical advances allowed for the construction of reliable long distance pipelines, resulting in a natural gas industry boom. At the same time petrochemical industry with its new plastic materials quickly increased production.  Even now gas production is gaining market share as LNG provides an economical way of transporting the gas from even the remotest sites.
With oil prices of 50 dollars per barrel or more, even more difficult to access sources become economically interesting. Such sources include tar sands in Venezuela and Canada as well as oil shales. Synthetic diesel (syndiesel) from natural gas and biological sources (biodiesel, ethanol) have also become commercially viable. These sources may eventually more than triple the potential reserves of hydrocarbon fuels.