Contradictory to what many people believe, fossil fuels are not dead dinosaur remains. “In fact, most of the fossil fuels we find today were formed millions of years before the first dinosaurs” (“Fossil Energy: How Fossil Fuels Were Formed,” n.d.). They were formed from prehistoric plants and animals that lived many millions of years ago and are considered non-renewable because they are not sustainable and cannot be easily replaced due to their formation taking billions of years. “When these ancient living things died, they decomposed and became buried under layers and layers of mud, rock, and sand. Eventually, hundreds and sometimes thousands of feet of earth covered them” (“Fossil Energy: How Fossil Fuels Were Formed,” n.d.). In some …show more content…
The oil is extracted by simply being forced through a rock, which the droplets can actually do on their own, as they are pushed by large amounts of pressure that exist beneath the surface. This pressure comes from a build-up of rock lying on the oil and from heat from the earth that builds up in a reservoir and expands any gases from the inside of the rock. When an oil well strikes a reservoir, the pressure is released and forces the oil through the rock and up to the surface. The oil may squeeze into any fractures in the reservoir, and if these fractures run in the direction of an oil well, they can act as pipelines in which the oil will flow. After scientists have tested the oil and the rocks, oil companies will begin drilling in the wells and rock samples will be brought to the surface. After the scientists have studied the rock samples from above ground and are convinced that they have found the right type of rock, companies begin drilling production wells. “When the wells first hit the reservoir, some of the oil begins coming to the surface immediately” (“Fossil Energy: How Fossil Fuels Were Formed,” n.d.). However, with today’s technology, oil companies are able to install special equipment to help the oil from spurting hundreds and hundreds of feet from the ground. When a new oil field begins its production process, nature takes its course and does most of the work. The natural pressures from the reservoir force the oil into production
There are a lot of misconceptions while talking about fossils. Fossils are not limited to the remains of a once living thing, but rather the evidence of life that existed in the past. This means that a fossil can be a dinosaur footprint, the form of a body on dry mud, bones, etc.
In Texas, there is an economic powerhouse that not only runs deep beneath fields of cotton, but also reaches miles beyond the green pastures of cattle. Its multitude of uses in daily life also far outweighs the benefits of technology. This resource, greater than any other in Texas, is oil. In 1866 the first commercial oil well was dug near Nacogdoches, Texas but unfortunately the well came up dry. Thirty years later in 1894 oil was discovered in Corsicana, Texas by accident while a water well was being dug. This was the first economically significant discovery of oil in Texas. On January 10, 1901, Texas was catapulted into the era of oil and gas with the discovery at Spindletop. The Spindletop well, located south of Beaumont produced roughly
When people hear the word oil it is commonly interpreted as gas, but the oil that we drill is not what goes into our cars. The oil that is retrieved from the ground is called crude oil, Oil in its raw natural form and when it becomes refined it is used in plastics, rubber, and gasoline. ”Gasoline is a volatile, flammable liquid obtained from the refinement of petroleum, or crude oil. It was originally discarded as a byproduct of kerosene production.” The first oil well was found and harvested in Titusville, Pennsylvania by a man named Edwin L. Drake, in 1859. The well was about 70 feet deep (How gas). It pumped between 20-40 barrels a day
Petroleum is created over millions of years from dead alagae that goes to the bottom of the ocean and is buried beneath the surface.
Saturation trends in the Pronghorn and the upper Three Forks (Figure 21), indicates that hydrocarbons are being occluded from the lower Bakken into the Three Forks, but not entirely. Oil saturation gradually decreases from the top of the Pronghorn to the base indicating less hydrocarbons are being pushed into the upper Three Forks. However, the oil saturation never reach 0% and only decreases to approximately 60 to 70 % water saturation. The oil saturation then gradually increases from the top of the Three Forks to the top of the first claystone. This trend is observed throughout all the wells within Painted Woods, independent to the thickness of the Pronghorn. Even though there is less volume of generated lower Bakken hydrocarbons, oil is still able to be transmitted through the Pronghorn across Painted Woods. However, the quantities transmitted are likely less compared to other
Fracking oil is one of the ways in which crude oil gets produced. Crude oil is created from the remains of carcass and
They then pump fluid through pipelines into the drilled areas in order to extract materials that would further indicate the presence of oil. Once a company is certain that there is a sufficient amount of oil at a given location to make drilling worthwhile, it sets up a more permanent structure, or platform, from which to extract it. The oil that is pumped out is sent through pipelines back to shore. An offshore facility can pump oil from a field for decades.
Since the beginning of the oilfield in the United States, Texas has been one of the leading states in this industry. In 1866, Lyne T. Barret drilled the first producing oil well at Melrose in Nacogdoches County [7]. From here, more wells were brought in, but the big Texas oil revolution began at a well-called Lucas No. 1. It was here, In Spindle top, Beaumont, where Capt. Anthony F. Lucas drilled the well that would produce 94 percent of the state’s production at the time and produce more than 17 million barrels of oil [7]. Now, 114 years later, Texas has given up another oil field play that will revolutionize the industry. This play is named Eagle Ford Shale. Figure 1 shows where the shale outcrops
At some point in our daily activities, we all draw upon a reserve of one or more of earth's natural resources, One of the most crucial of these being crude oil. It and its derivatives are used as primary sources of energy and thus, crude oil it is constantly in high demand. In order to meet this demand in the most economical fashion, oil companies have made offshore drilling into a common practice. However, offshore drilling is devastating to the environment in several ways. As a result of the equipment and methods used to extract the oil, high levels of pollution are released into the ocean, disturbing nearby ecosystems. Secondly, the high level of drilling is consistently
Next drillers inject the well with extremely pressurized fluid. The fluid is a make of water, sand, and lube sent into the wellbore under high pressure. This fluid initiates the adjacent rock to crack and release natural gas that has been captive underneath the earth surface. The forced mixture then creates a fairway to the well and consents the released gas to flow to the wellbore.
The formation of the other two fossil fuels (crude oil and natural gas) took millions of years just like coal. Oil and gas come from the remains of small animals and plants. Long ago, when the animals and plants died, they sank to the bottom of the sea. The dead matter formed a large mass, which over time was covered by layers of sand, silt, and mud. As the weight of the sediment increased, the mass became more and more compressed. Then, the heat and pressure of the Earth eventually turned the mass into oil and gas. If the heat applied during the formation was low, then more oil was produced than gas. If the temperature was
This paper will discuss the three main fossil fuels which are oil, coal, and natural gas. This research shows how the fossil fuels are formed, where they could be found, and explain how they were formed over millions of years. This paper will show the numerous advantages of fossil fuels compared to the disadvantages and how they are hurting the Earth. Fossils fuels are critical to the function of everyday life. The world would be a different if fossil fuels and their uses were not to of use.
Coal, oil, and gas were all formed from the remains of decayed and decomposing ancient animals and plants (Science Daily 2014). These fossil fuels we produced far before the dinosaurs ever roamed the earth, during the Carboniferous Period (Chapter 8 2012). This period of time, estimated around 360-286 million-years-ago, is believed to be when the earth was covered mostly in trees, plants, and swamps, and the bodies of water existing at the time were all filled with hundreds-of-millions of small plants called algae.
Since the mass of oil and gas are less than the rocks, the oil and gas formed in the deep source rock always migrate upwards, trying to reach the surface and seeps out into land or water. After the oil and gas formed in the source rock, the pressure applied on the rock tried to squeeze out the oil out of rock and move upwards, they could travel along any pathways such as open faults and fractures. Therefore, eventually oil and gas stop travelling and reserved in what we call an oil trap, where we explore and exploit the accumulated oil and gas. The reason that a trap could hold the oil and gas in the rocks in the certain depth is each trap has a layer of impermeable rock as a cap rock on the top of the trap, keeping the oil and gas just under the trap and prohibiting their upward migration.
This is the underground rock that petroleum is taking, from the matter of plants and animals decomposed into oil during these millions of years ago. It accumulated into pools deep underground. They considered it impossible and laughed about the situation. The drilling of the first well was in Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1869, and ushered in a new world wide era; the oil age. Drakes drilling operation struck oil 70 feet below the ground. After what he did, petroleum engineering was established because the drill can go below as under 6 miles and the U.S began to rely so much on oil that they started to begin schools and education. The worldwide was devised in the United States in 1914.