Tidal Current Energy

Chapter 1
The Future of Oil and Gas
Fossil Fuels
Anthony R. H. Goodwin
Schlumberger Technology Corporation, 125 Industrial Blvd, Sugar Land, Texas,
TX 77478, USA
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Introduction
This chapter focuses on organizations which locate, develop and produces naturally
occurring hydrocarbon from various types of underground strata or formations
that are commonly known as the oil and gas industry. The extracted
hydrocarbon is processed by a subset of the same industry into a variety of
products that include fuel for combustion, feedstock for the production of plastic,
etc. These industries use the fundamental disciplines of chemistry and physics,
and also require specialists in petroleum engineering, geology, geophysics,
environmental science, geochemistry, and chemical engineering.
There is a plethora of topics that could be covered in this chapter. Necessarily,
because of the author’s formal training as a chemist and subsequent background
in the oil and gas industry, the content draws upon fluid thermophysics
and, in particular, the measurement of phase behavior, density and viscosity.
Indeed, this chapter will define types of oil and gas according to location of the
substance on a phase diagram, density and viscosity. It will also recite the speculation
with regard to the amount of remaining usable oil and gas, and allude to
other naturally occurring hydrocarbon sources that could extend the duration of
the hydrocarbon economy. The need for liquid hydrocarbon for transportation
will be a matter raised in Chapter 20. Other chapters in this book are concerned
with so-called unconventional hydrocarbon sources of heavy oil and bitumen
(or tar sands), which are described in Chapter 4, and methane hydrates in
Chapter 16; another unconventional resource of oil shale is of major significance
and will be mentioned in this chapter. However, the main objective of this chapter
is to provide evidence that the methods developed by the oil and gas industry
(for drilling wells, measuring the properties of formations and developing
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