CASE 055 - Oil extraction, refining & marketing

Drilling for oil

In 2008 alone, the United States produced an estimated 4.9 million barrels of crude oil per day and imported 9.8 million barrels per day from other countries [source: U.S. Energy Information Administration]. This oil gets refined into gasoline, kerosene, heating oil and other products. To keep up with our consumption, oil companies must constantly look for new sources of petroleum, as well as improve the production of existing wells. How does a company go about finding oil and pumping it from the ground? You may have seen images of black crude oil gushing out of the ground, or seen an oil well in movies and television shows like "Giant," "Oklahoma Crude," "Armageddon" and "Beverly Hillbillies." But modern oil production is quite different from the way it's portrayed in the movies. works.
Oil is a fossil fuel found in many countries around the world. On the next page, we'll discuss how oil is formed and how geologists find it.

Offshore drilling - Very expensive, dangerous and in BP's case causes polution



Tar sands drilling and extraction



Drilling for oil - Discovery
http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/dirty-jobs-oil-drillers.html

Refining oil

An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where crude oil is processed and refined into more useful petroleum products, such as gasoline, diesel fuel, asphalt base, heating oil, kerosene, and liquefied petroleum gas. Oil refineries are typically large sprawling industrial complexes with extensive piping running throughout, carrying streams of fluids between large chemical processing units. In many ways, oil refineries use much of the technology of, and can be thought of as types of chemical plants. The crude oil feedstock has typically been processed by an oil production plant. There is usually an oil depot (tank farm) at or near an oil refinery for storage of bulk liquid products.



Selling the oil

With the ever rising cost of motor fuel in most countries around the world, more and more attention has been focused on the largest oil companies in today's market. Many people are not entirely certain what are the largest oil companies in the world today.

Before turning to focus directly on the largest oil companies in the world, it is interesting to look at the top ten largest corporations of all varieties in operation in the world today. The top ten corporations in the world today, the ten largest corporations in the world today are:

Exxon Mobil
Wal-Mart Stores
Royal Dutch Shell
BP
General Motors
Chevron
DaimlerChrysler
Toyota Motor
Ford Motor
ConocoPhillips

4 are oil companies and 5 only exist coz of oil and Wal-mart, well thats loads of plastic in all 10 million stores worldwide



Also check out CASE 015 - Peak oil and CASE 126 - pipeline wars