Make a report about the history of petroleum industry.
Find additional information about the present-day situation in petroleum industry. You can search the following websites:
www.oilonline.com
www.offshore-engineer.com
www.oilandgasarticles.com
www.neftegaz.ru
www.subsea.org
www.oilandgaseurasia.com
What do you know about OPEC? What is the aim of this organization? What countries does it include? Read the following text and answer these questions:
OPEC
OPEC Logo
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is an international cartel made up of Iraq, Indonesia, Iran, Kuwait, Libya, Angola, Algeria, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. The Vienna-based organization has maintained its headquarters there since 1965, hosting regular meetings between the oil ministers of its member states.
The principle aim of the organization, according to its Statute, is the determination of the best means for safeguarding their interests, individually and collectively; devising ways and means of ensuring the stabilization of prices in international oil markets with a view to eliminating harmful and unnecessary fluctuations; giving due regard at all times to the interests of the producing nations and to the necessity of securing a steady income to the producing countries; an efficient, economic and regular supply of petroleum to consuming nations, and a fair return on their capital to those investing in the petroleum industry.
OPEC's influence on the market has been called into question. Several members of OPEC alarmed the world and triggered high inflation across both the developing and developed world when they used oil embargoes in the 1973 oil crisis. OPEC's ability to control the price of oil has diminished somewhat since then, due to the subsequent discovery and development of large oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea, the opening up of Russia, and market modernization. OPEC nations still account for two-thirds of the world's oil reserves, and, in 2005, 41.7% of the world's oil production, affording them considerable control over the global market. The next largest group of producers, members of the OECD and the Post-Soviet states produced only 23.8% and 14.8%, respectively, of the world's total oil production. However, in August 2004, OPEC began communicating that its members had little excess pumping capacity, indicating that the cartel was losing influence over crude oil prices.
Oil extraction
Read the text and find out what EOR means:
The most common method of obtaining petroleum is extracting it from oil wells found in oil fields. With improved technologies and higher demand for hydrocarbons various methods are applied in petroleum exploration and development to optimize the recovery of oil and gas.
Primary recovery methods are used to extract oil that is brought to the surface by underground pressure, and can generally recover about 20% of the oil present. The natural pressure can come from several different sources; where it is provided by an underlying water layer it is called a water drive reservoir and where it is from the gas cap above it is called gas drive.
After the reservoir pressure has depleted to the point that the oil is no longer brought to the surface, secondary recovery methods draw another 5 to 10% of the oil in the well to the surface. In a water drive oil field, water can be injected into the water layer below the oil, and in a gas drive field it can be injected into the gas cap above to repressurize the reservoir.
Finally, when secondary oil recovery methods are no longer viable, tertiary recovery methods reduce the viscosity of the oil in order to bring more to the surface. These may involve the injection of heat, vapor, surfactants, solvents, or miscible gases as in carbon dioxide flooding. By their very nature enhanced oil recovery schemes are expensive and involve considerable risk. The costs and risks can only increase in an offshore environment. And yet, if the benefits are high enough, there are those individuals and companies who will overcome the technical challenges to make such schemes work.
During the oil price increases of 2004-2008, alternative methods of producing oil gained importance. The earth has vast sources of unconventional petroleum reserves in the form of tar sands, bitumen fields and oil shale. The most widely known alternatives involve extracting oil from sources such as oil shale or tar sands. These resources exist in large quantities; however, extracting the oil at low cost without excessively harming the environment remains a challenge.