Petroleum

I

Introduction

Petroleum, or crude oil, naturally occurring oily, bituminous liquid composed of various organic chemicals. It is found in large quantities below the surface of the Earth and is used as a fuel and as a raw material in the chemical industry. Modern industrial societies use it primarily to achieve a degree of mobility—on land, at sea, and in the air—that was barely imaginable less than a hundred years ago. In addition, petroleum and its derivatives are used in the manufacture of medicines and fertilizers, foodstuffs, plastic ware, building materials, paints, and cloth, and to generate electricity.

In fact, modern industrial civilization depends on petroleum and its products; the physical structure and way of life of the suburban communities that surround the great cities are the result of an ample and inexpensive supply of petroleum. In addition, the goals of developing countries—to exploit their natural resources and to supply foodstuffs for the burgeoning populations—are based on the assumption of petroleum availability. Politically imposed restrictions on the oil supply drove up prices for periods during the 1970s. This prompted fears of a global scarcity of petroleum, but by the mid-1990s prices were down to half of what they had been ten years before. See Energy Supply, World.

II

Characteristics

All petroleum consists principally of hydrocarbons, although a few sulphur-containing and oxygen-containing compounds are usually present; the sulphur content varies from about 0.1 to 5 per cent. Petroleum contains gaseous, liquid, and solid elements. The consistency of petroleum varies from liquid as thin as petrol to liquid so thick that it will barely pour. Small quantities of gaseous compounds are usually dissolved in the liquid; when larger quantities of these compounds are present, the petroleum deposit is associated with a deposit of natural gas (see Gases, Fuel).

Three broad classes of crude petroleum exist: the paraffin types, the asphaltic types, and the mixed-base types. The paraffin types are composed of molecules in which the number of hydrogen atoms is always two more than twice the number of carbon atoms. The characteristic molecules in the asphaltic types are naphthenes, composed of twice as many hydrogen atoms as carbon atoms. In the mixed-base group are both paraffin hydrocarbons and naphthenes. See Asphalt; Naphtha; Wax.

III

Formation

Petroleum is formed under the Earth’s surface by the decomposition of marine organisms. The remains of tiny organisms that live in the sea—and, to a lesser extent, those of land organisms that are carried down to the sea in rivers and of plants that grow on the ocean bottoms—are mixed with the fine sands and silts that settle to the bottom in quiet sea basins. Such deposits, which are rich in organic materials, become the source rocks for the generation of crude oil. The process began many millions of years ago with the development of abundant life, and it continues to this day. The sediments grow thicker and sink into the sea floor under their own weight. As additional deposits pile up, the pressure on the ones below increases several thousand times, and the temperature rises by several hundred degrees. The mud and sand harden into shale and sandstone; carbonate precipitates and skeletal shells harden into limestone; and the remains of the dead organisms are transformed into crude oil and natural gas.

Once the petroleum forms, it flows upward in the Earth’s crust because it has a lower density than the brines that saturate the interstices of the shales, sands, and carbonate rocks that constitute the crust of the Earth. The crude oil and natural gas rise into the microscopic pores of the coarser sediments lying above. Frequently, the rising material encounters an impermeable shale or dense layer of rock that prevents further migration; the oil has become trapped, and a reservoir of petroleum is formed. A significant amount of the upward-migrating petroleum, however, does not encounter impermeable rock but instead flows out at the surface of the Earth or on to the ocean floor. Surface deposits also include bituminous lakes and escaping natural gas.

IV

Historical Development

These surface deposits of crude oil have been known to human beings for thousands of years. In the areas where they occurred, they were long used for such limited purposes as caulking boats, waterproofing cloth, and fuelling torches. By the time of the Renaissance, some surface deposits were being distilled to obtain lubricants and medicinal products, but the real exploitation of crude oil did not begin until the 19th century. The Industrial Revolution had by then brought about a search for new fuels, and the social changes it effected had produced a need for good, cheap oil for lamps; people wished to be able to work and read after dark. Whale oil, however, was available only to the rich, tallow candles had an unpleasant odour, and gas jets were available only in the most modern homes in metropolitan areas.

The search for a better lamp fuel led to a great demand for “rock oil”—that is, crude oil—and various scientists in the mid-19th century were developing processes to make commercial use of it. Thus the Scottish chemist James Young, with others, began to manufacture various products from crude oil, but he later turned to coal distillation and the exploitation of oil shales. In 1852 the Canadian doctor and geologist Abraham Gessner obtained a patent for producing from crude oil a relatively clean-burning, affordable lamp fuel, paraffin (kerosene); and in 1855 an American chemist, Benjamin Silliman, published a report indicating the wide range of useful products that could be derived through the distillation of petroleum.

Thus the quest for greater supplies of crude oil began. Wells drilled for water and salt were occasionally infiltrated by petroleum, and natural gas from wells was exploited for lighting and as a fuel in China as early as the 2nd century ad. In the West the first such wells were dug in Germany in 1857-1859. The event that gained world fame was the drilling of an oil well near Oil Creek, Pennsylvania, by “Colonel” Edwin L. Drake in 1859. Drake, contracted by the American industrialist George H. Bissell—who had also supplied Silliman with rock-oil samples for his report—drilled to find the supposed “mother pool” from which the oil seeps of western Pennsylvania were assumed to be emanating. The reservoir Drake tapped was shallow—only 21.2 m (69y ft) deep—and the petroleum was a paraffin type that flowed readily and was easy to distil.

Drake’s success marked the beginning of the rapid growth of the modern petroleum industry. Soon petroleum received the attention of the scientific community, and coherent hypotheses were developed for its formation, migration upward through the Earth, and entrapment. With the invention of the internal-combustion engine and the energy needs brought on by World War I, the petroleum industry became one of the foundations of industrial society.