Petroleum seeps have been known for millennia, mostly in the Middle East. In the 1820's Russia produced a modest amount of oil, but in 1846 the first commercial well was drilled in Baku, Azerbaijan. That was followed quickly in North America by wells in Canada and in Pennsylvania. The rush was then on, and despite the Civil War rocking the United States, explorers continued to drill wells and produce oil.
Production expanded by many orders of magnitude I the 20th century, as geological science was brought to bear on exploration,and some of the world's largest reserves were discovered in Saudi Arabia and the surrounding countries. Production is split globally between state-owned enterprises in countries like Saudi Arabia,Russia and Brazil, and private enterprise in the United States and Canada.
Primary energy is defined as energy derived directly from nature, without conversion: for example, burning of fossil fuels, collection of solar heat, kinetic energy harvested from wind; before any are applied to an industrial process or converted to electricity. 84% of our primary energy comes from petroleum. The oil market globally was worth roughly $4.7T in 2020, about 5.4% of the roughly $86T gross world product. It would be hard to put a dollar value, however, to the foundational importance of petroleum to all economic activities, ranging from fuel for vehicles of all sorts (from tankers to tractors), to electricity and packaging materials. Petroleum consumption is incorporated into nearly every facet of modern life.
Globally we have extracted roughly 1.5T barrels (bbl, or British barrel = 42 gallons) of oil, with an estimated 1.7T bbl remaining. Daily production has hovered around 90M bbl/day. Climate models estimate that roughly 60% of that petroleum reserve must remain unused for any viable hope of meeting the Paris agreement goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C.
Tomorrow: basics about petroleum.
Be brave, and be well.
No comments:
Post a Comment