石油工程专业外语电子教材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 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 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 of 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 world’s economy is based not on gold or political philosophies, but rather on the price of a barrel of crude.Man first became acquainted with petroleum through natural “seeps,” or spots on the earth’s surface where shallow deposits of crude oil—and often natural gas—oozed 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 in the Bible, but also in man’s 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 Solomon’s temple. It was from “slime pits”near the Dead Sea, that the Egyptians obtained the bitumen they used 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 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 deep 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 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 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 enemy.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 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 WorldWhen 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 ships 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 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 chapapote or mene—which had worked its way to the earth’s surface—as 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 Cruzhad written home to Spain describing the many uses of chapapote in Mexico, which included toothpaste and chewing gum. However. Venezuela may have become the world’s 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 Emperor Charles Ⅴ. 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 today’s petroleum industry are closely entwined with the history of Latin America, and many Latin nations have contributed 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 the 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 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 “Indian 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 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 protect 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 so 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 winter 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 downand the resulting salt used to cure their meat.But some of these crude, 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 estate’s “bitumen spring”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 near Tarentum, Pennsylvania, was one of these. In addition to salt, Kier’s 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 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.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 instead 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 night, after the day’s 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 expensive 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 manufactured 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 “jets”—thousands of times brighter than candies—not 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 areas. So thesearch, 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 popular almost immediately, and the world’s 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. Abraham 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 Young’s, he became the first in North America to distill a hydrocarbon into lamp fuel. 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 more 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 per 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-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 north shore of Lake Ontario, a metropolis inhabited by 37 settlers. 34 cows. and 16 hogs, founded the world’s 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 located 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 boiling 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 and by 1856 their company failed andwas 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 refinery 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 America’s first integrated oil company, since its activities included exploration, production, refining, and marketing. That same year, nearly 100 wells were drilled in the Oil Springs area with the successful ones producing 12 to 23 B/D (barrels per day). Then, on January 16, I862, the greatest gusher the world had ever seen blew in at Oil Springs. Spouting crude more than 20 ft into the air, it flowed at an astonishing 2.000 B/D. Refineries quickly sprang up across Ontario, but almost as quickly, the momentum of the growing industry flowed south across the border (Figure 1-1).Figure 1-1 James Miller Williams [courtesy The Oil Museum of Canada]1.2 The United StatesIn 1857, Col. A. C. Ferris, a major supplier of lamp oil, saw samples of Samuel Kiers rock oil in use. He purchased some and ran it through his processing plant. It producedsuch a superior lighting oil that he sent agents far and wide buying crude for $20/bbl, a price the world would not see again for more than a century. Some of this oil he purchased from Williams in Ontario, although most of his supply came haphazardly from brine wells, oil springs, or oil seeps. Suddenly, the pieces of the puzzle began to come together, there was a growing need for the product, a firm market price had been established, so all that remained was the development of a reliable supply of raw material in quantity, in this case, crude oil.1.2.1 The Birth of the IndustryJames Miller Williams may well have been the father of the modern oil industry, but history, fickle as always, has chosen to award that honor to an American, Col. Edwin Drake(Figure 1-2). A former railway conductor, the “colonel” was an affectation adopted to impress the towns-people of Oil Creek. Pennsylvania, where Drake, as representative of the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company, spent three unsuccessful years trying to skim oil in marketable quantities from the same springs the Indians had used years before. When the company failed, Drake organized the Seneca Oil Company to try again. This time he looked at the brine wells that had been drilled at nearby Tarantum and made the momentous decision to try to obtain oil in quantity by drilling for it —a decision that brought him ridicule and derision from the local population.Figure 1-2 Colonel Edwin Drake [courtesy The Drake Well Museum]He assembled a steam-powered cable-tool drilling rig much the same as the ones used by the salt water drillers and began operations. That he was successful was due in no smallpart to the skill and dedication of his driller, William A, “Uncle Billy” Smith, a blacksmith and experienced brine well driller. After penetrating 30 ft of rock. Drake struck oil at a total depth of 69 1/2 ft. The well was not a gusher —the oil had to be pumped to the surface, but it was the first “oil-well”in the United States and the lamp oil producers quickly flocked to the site to buy Drake’s oil for $20/bbl. That day, August 27, I859, is noted as the birthday of the oil industry, for Drake had proves that it was possible to obtain oil in quantity by drilling for it through rock. At last the combination had come together: the need for oil, an established market and price, and a method of obtaining oil in quantity (Figure 1-3).Figure 1-3 Drake Well 1866 [courtesy The Drake Well Museum]Almost overnight Titusville and the Oil Creek area became the World’s first oil boom town as buyers, would-be producers, and lessors swarmed to the area, giving western Pennsylvania the title “Cradle of the Oil industry.” Although many men in many countries around the world were seeking oil, Drake just happened to be the first to find it in quantity by drilling through rock. and he was far more fortunate in his selection of a site than anyone at the time realized(Figure 1-4).By pure chance the Drake well was located in an area where the pay sands were close to the earth’s surface and could easily be reached with the primitive equipment at hand. In fact, the Oil Creek field was the shallowest and most productive ever discovered. This permitted large-scale production in a short time. The area was also accessible to the available transportation facilities. In addition to the railroad, Oil City, south of Titusville, was located on the banks of the Allegheny River which joined both the Monongahela andthe Ohio at Pittsburgh. Thus, needed supplies could be brought in and the oil shipped out to the markets of the rapidly industrializing north. As a final blessing, the oil was of high gravity and sulfur-free. In fact, for decades to come Pennsylvania-grade crude was the world’s standard against which all other oils were measured. It could easily be refined into a high-quality kerosene with the unsophisticated refining processes that were then in use. Also, since it had a paraffin base, it could easily be made into lubricants with the available technology. If Drake’s oil had been heavy, sour crude with a high sulfur content, the pioneer refiners would not have known what to do with it and the birth of the industry would have been delayed.Figure 1-4 Oil Creek in early 1860s[courtesy The Drake Well Museum]1.2.2 New Uses for PetroleumDozens of rigs soon covered the Pennsylvania landscape. Oil was produced so rapidly and in such great quantities that the existing storage facilities soon proved woefully inadequate and thousands of barrels spilled out on the ground and into rivers and creeks. The price rapidly began to drop, but despite the initial overproduction and a lowered price structure, the infant industry continued to grow and prosper as more and more uses were discovered for petroleum. At first the only needs were for lamp oil and lubricants, anything else that came out of the barrel including naphtha, benzene, and gasoline, was considered dangerous waste which was either burned or dumped into the nearest creek.The new industry was still only a two-year old infant when the horror of the Civil War burst across America, unleashing a new technological age. No longer were ships powered by sail alone—steam engines propelled supplies across the Atlantic, and the first iron warships and steamboats up and down the mighty rivers. Their engines, as well as the machinery in the factories that turned out cannons, repeating firearms, telegraph wire,barbed wire, and tents and clothing all needed lubrication, and lamp oil was needed to keep them working through the night, and to illuminate the field hospitals and headquarters tents.1.2.3 The Move WestwardBy the time the last Confederate general, Stand Watie, a Cherokee Indian, surrendered in Texas, half the nation lay in ruins. All of the railroads in the south, together with most of the port and manufacturing facilities, had been destroyed. A massive job of rebuilding was needed, one that called for more and more petroleum products. No sooner than this was underway, than men began to turn their ambitions westward. The War had given them the tools: barbed wire, steamboats, railroads, and repeating firearms, with which they could finally conquer the American West. The need for oil had turned into a never-ending demand.Not only was there a great demand for oil, there were great profits to be made in the ever-growing industry, a fact which did not escape the notice of John D. Rockefeller, who, in 1870, founded the Standard Oil Company. There were also great profits to be made by those who found new sources of oil to meet these increasing needs. This was still an era when little was known about reservoir mechanics, and there were fears that the Pennsylvania fields were becoming totally depleted. So as Americans moved westward, so did the search for oil. New fields were discovered in the Ohio Valley and in Illinois and Kentucky, although much of this proved to be heavier and more sour than the Pennsylvania grade crude. The search continued however, even into Wyoming, although these early wildcatters could not know that an American and two Germans, Thomas A. Edison, Gottlieb Daimler, and Carl Benz were on the verge of perfecting inventions that would change the oil industry—and the world—forever.1.2.4 Winners and LosersIn early part of the nineteenth century the Cherokee Indians in the southeastern United Stales became known as one of the Five “Civilized” Tribes because they had adapted so well to the white man’s society. Many owned large estates and lived in fine homes whose furnishings often included extensive libraries. They published their own newspaper in the Cherokee language, and they sent their children to universities in the north and in Europe to be educated. Suddenly however, disaster struck. Gold was discovered on the Cherokee lands in northern Georgia. Overnight, greedy gold seekers evicted them from their home and confiscated their lands. Those who escaped the volunteer “militia”were driven westward at bayonet point, and hundreds died along the shameful Trail of Tears. Eventually, the survivors were resettled in the vast Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory. Very few, if any at all, ever got to enjoy any of the mineral wealth of their ancestral home.Removal, an integral part of the “taming of the west,” was the Government’s policy of moving as many Indians as possible onto reservations, many of which were located in Indian Territory. A few years after the Cherokees, it came the Osages’turn to go. They pointed out to the Government that there was no land left that was not already assigned to a tribe. The terse response was, “Find some land, buy it, and go—or else.” What they found was 1.8 million ac of hilly, rocky scrub, little suited for farming or much else, at the northern end of the Cherokee Nation. The Cherokees were more than happy to unload it on the hapless Osages for 75$/ac. Happy that is, until the Nellie Johnstone #1 was drilled in 1897.The first producing well in the Territory, it signaled the opening of the vast Oklahoma oil fields and for a time made the Osages the richest per capita nation in the world. But it was during a few hours on the afternoon of January 10, 1901, on a marshy bit of waste land near Beaumont, Texas, that the world was changed forever.1.3 SpindletopSpindletop—to oilmen the name still evokes feelings akin to Columbus first sighting of the New World or Neil Armstrong first setting foot on the moon. For it was on this worthless bit of Texas swamp that the first American gusher blew in with a mighty roar that was heard around the world. For if Drake’s well signaled the birth of the oil industry. Spindletop gave birth to Age of Liquid Fuel, and in so doing changed the lives of everyone on Earth. Now there was no looking back.Spindietop—although that is not the name they would have chosen—was the culmination of the dreams of two highly unlike, but equally colorful oilmen: Captain Anthony Lucas, a transplanted Slav mining engineer, and Patillo “Bud”Higgins, a one-armed Texas Hellraiser turned Sunday School teacher.As a youth, Higgins had lost an arm as the result of a prank. One evening he and a group of companions had tossed a hornet’s nest into a tent where a Baptist revival meeting was taking place. An overly zealous deputy sheriff pursuing the group fired a shot that stuck young Higgins in the arm. The wound became infected and his arm had to be amputated. Higgins was a carousing brawler however, and to him the loss of a limb seemed to mean little. He headed for the timber country where he proceeded to show the other loggers he could outfight, outdrink, and outwork anyone with two arms and fists. His reputation grew until the townspeople dreaded to see him come in out of the woods on Saturday nights. But on one such evening fate stepped in again. He was passing another Baptist tent meeting much like the first one, when he paused for a moment, stayed to listen, and as a result “got religion.”One of the pillars of the church, George W. Carroll, was deeply impressed by Higgins’conversion and offered him a job in his land and real estate business. Higgins accepted, and quickly became a successful and respected member of the community. One day, after a heavy rainstorm, Higgins happened to notice an unusual deposit of red clay that contrasted sharply with the black soil of the area. He had a sample analyzed and found it was the type of clay from which bricks could be made.Sensing a ready market for bricks, Higgins had a group of investors join him in building a kiln. The business showed a profit, but was inefficient, so Higgins went north to study established kiln operations. In Pennsylvania and Ohio he learned the kilns were fired by natural gas and by oil, more stable and efficient fuels than wood or coal. In seeking more information, he learned that many of the geological characteristics that oilmen looked for in their search for petroleum were present in a small mound that rose from the marshes south of Beaumont. When he returned to Texas, he studied the area carefully and became convinced that the mound was sitting above oil—much oil.Figure 1-5 Patillo Higgins [courtesy Amoco Torch]He approached George Carroll with his theory. Carroll agreed to support him, and in 1892 they formed the Gladys City Oil, Gas, and Manufacturing Company. Together with his dream of oil, Higgins had another dream—that of a whole new planned city. One with oil wells of course, but so laid out that there would be orderly growth and beauty as well as industry. For five years, using crude water well equipment, the company sought oil with no success. Finally, Higgins sold his interest to Carroll, and spent three years trying to form。
