Author: bomuo

Largest Chinese oil and gas producer and distributor and one of the largest global oil companies, whose core business includes exploration, development, production and marketing of crude oil and natural gas; refining, transportation, storage and marketing of crude oil and oil products; production and marketing of primary petrochemical products, derivative chemicals and other chemicals; transportation of natural gas, crude oil and refined oil, and marketing of natural gas. PetroChina is the company with the largest market value, being the first company with a market cap of $1 trillion.

Brazil’s state-controlled oil company

The ability, or measurement of a rock’s ability, to transmit fluids, typically measured in darcies or millidarcies. Formations that transmit fluids readily, such as sandstones, are described as permeable and tend to have many large, well-connected pores. Impermeable formations, such as shales and siltstones, tend to be finer grained or of a mixed grain size, with smaller, fewer, or less interconnected pores. Absolute permeability is the measurement of the permeability conducted when a single fluid, or phase, is present in the rock. Effective permeability is the ability to preferentially flow or transmit a particular fluid through a rock when other immiscible fluids are present in the reservoir (for example, effective permeability of gas in a gas-water reservoir). Relative permeability is the ratio of effective permeability of a particular fluid at a particular saturation to absolute permeability of that fluid at total saturation. If a single fluid is present in a rock, its relative permeability is 1.0. Calculation of relative permeability allows for comparison of the different abilities of fluids to flow in the presence of each other, since the presence of more than one fluid generally inhibits flow.

There are two main types of onshore drilling for natural gas. Percussion /cable tool drilling, consists of raising and dropping a heavy metal bit into the ground, effectively punching a hole down through the Earth. Cable tool drilling is usually used for shallow, low pressure formations. The second drilling method is known as rotary drilling, and consists of a sharp, rotating metal bit used to drill through the Earth’s crust. This type of drilling is used primarily for deeper wells that may be under high downhole pressure.

That time when the maximum rate of petroleum production has been reached and the quantities can thus only decline after this period. There is a conflict between those who claim that that there is a large endowment of resources left in the world and that there is nothing to worry about and those that say that we have already hit peak oil, and there’s little we can do. Since 1980, discoveries have not replaced annual global crude oil production and discoveries are getting smaller and located in more difficult environments, such as the deepwater Gulf of Mexico. US oil production peaked in 1970. North Sea production peaked in 2000. Mexico peaked in 2004. Within the next few years, conventional non-OPEC production will reach a plateau. In fact, it is said that 60% of the world’s oil production is from countries that have already peaked. Total believes for instance that the world will never be able to produce more than 89m barrels a day of oil, due to high costs in areas such as Canada and political restrictions in countries like Iran and Iraq. In November 2009, an anonymous IEA source told the UK’s Guardian newspaper that the peak production figure of 105 million barrels per day of oil was much higher than can be justified and that even a lower figure of 90-95 million bpd would be unlikely

There is a common confusion between peak oil and the extraction of oil reserves: even though there are still vast reservoirs of oil in the world, which can seemingly supply the world’s needs for many dozens of years, the issue is that if one has reached peak oil – which occurs when over a half of the reservoirs have been used, as a result of which the growing gap between higher consumption and lower production, leads to higher prices

A mixture of hydrocarbons which is semisolid at room temperature, and it is also odorless, when properly refined

The study of oil and gas bearing formations

The study of the branch of economic geology that deals with the origin, occurrence, movement, accumulation, and exploration of hydrocarbon fuels