The Basic Steps Of Oil Production
Michalis 'BIG Mike' Kotzakolios


Defined Tag: Oil Production.

The oil production process is not what it used to be. It used to be a crude (no pun intended), trial and error process of finding oil, followed by similarly poor extraction phase. Today, oil exploration and extraction is an extremely high technology adventure. It consists of mapping, zeroing in on, and extracting oil using capital and labor intensive processes. Why so much investment and attention on oil? Because it is used in virtually all manufacturing; and it is also used to heat homes, fuel trucks and planes; and to provide commuters with diesel and gasoline.

Oil is a thick hydrocarbon mixture that naturally occurs beneath the ground. Geologists speculate that crude oil is formed when ancient deposits of organic materials were buried. Millennia of heat and pressure transform this ancient plant material into crude oil. Unfortunately this oil cannot be produced simply by digging! This crude oil is often trapped within rock layers miles beneath the ground.

Production of oil cannot begin until it is found. There are several methods of oil exploration. Sometimes oil naturally seeps to the surface, suggesting that more lies beneath. Test wells can be drilled, but this is expensive and time consuming. Gravity and magnetic surveys are initially used to locate areas of interest to oil producers. Seismic surveys are then used to detect features in deep rock formations that might contain oil. Much like radar or ultrasound, vibrations are directed into the rock formations. The reflected waves give a rough idea of the geology of the area.

The oil's production continues by drilling down to the oil deposit. Oil drilling is an expensive and time consuming process, especially during offshore drilling. Extremely hard drill bits are rotated downward into the rock strata to form a continuous hole. Oil workers continuously add extensions to the drilling pipe until the drill head reaches the desired depth. Oil production continues as the well is capped and the crude oil is brought to the surface.

In reality, crude oil is not a consistent product by any means. Rather, it is a combination of literally thousands of different chemicals. Of course, simply extracting the oil and dumping it into a machine wont yield the intended result. Rather, it has to be refined to a usable, relatively consistent product through distillation (heating). During this process, it is usually separated out into several different products, which include diesel, heating oil, and gasoline. In the end, the product is relatively uniform; however, it does not matter, since all of the hydrocarbons in a given product will burn relatively consistently.