What Is the Petroleum Industry?

The petroleum industry is an industrial sector that extracts petroleum (including natural oil, oil shale, and natural gas) and refines it. It is composed of oilfield geological exploration, oilfield development and oil extraction, transportation, refining and processing. Oil is the "blood" of industry and an important industrial energy source. The development of the petroleum industry needs to do the following: (1) Do a good job of geological exploration, increase industrial reserves, determine a reasonable ratio of reserves to production; (2) strengthen scientific and technological research in oil extraction, according to the size of reserves, the natural pressure of the reservoir, etc. Natural conditions and factors, research and choose reasonable extraction technology and distribution of oil wells to improve the oilfield's recovery rate; (3) strengthen the construction of supporting engineering for oilfield exploitation, and choose a reasonable transportation method while developing the oilfield; (4) improve oil Refining and processing production technology level and management level to ensure the automation and continuity of the production process. ^[1]

The petroleum industry is an industrial sector that extracts oil, oily rocks, and natural gas and processes them. It includes oil and gas geological exploration, oil and gas field development, oil and gas exploration, petroleum refining, oil and gas transportation and storage and transportation units.

The discovery and use of oil and natural gas has a history of thousands of years, but it has only formed an industry for more than 100 years. As a high-quality energy source and a multi-purpose valuable chemical raw material, petroleum has been rapidly and widely used in various sectors of the national economy since the 20th century, which has caused great changes in the world's energy consumption structure. In the 1950s, world energy consumption mainly relied on coal. In the 1960s, oil and gas consumption increased rapidly in the composition of energy consumption. By the mid-1960s, oil and gas replaced coal, ranking first in the world's energy consumption.

In 1859, the American Drake drilled the first Drake well of modern T industry significance in Pennsylvania, marking the beginning of the modern oil industry. The initial development of the petroleum industry can be divided into two periods, one is the kerosene period. One is the gasoline period (power period). The kerosene period is about 1860 to 1900, and the main uses of coal during this period were lighting and civilian fuel. In the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. oil industry went from exploration, mining, refining, storage, transportation, and sales. A complete industrial chain has been formed and developed rapidly.

At the beginning of the 20th century, oil became the main engine of internal combustion engines. Human oil utilization finally entered the "dynamic period" from the "kerosene period". Generally speaking, from the inception of modern oil in 1859 until the end of World War II, the United States has always dominated the world's oil-oil market and is the world's energy center at this stage. During this period, because the U.S. oil industry concentrated on the Gulf Coast, this historical period was called the "Gulf of Mexico era."

From the end of the 19th century, with the discovery of oil fields in other parts of the world, the oil industry began to spread from the United States to the world. Especially with the first 20 years of the 20th century. After the collapse of American Standard Oil. The world oil market has entered a period of "Spring and Autumn and Warring States". By the end of the 1930s, international oil trade began to occupy a prominent position in the global energy trade. Obviously shaken the dominant position of coal in the international energy market. 1945 ~ 1973 was the second "golden age" of the rapid growth of the world's petroleum industry. By 1967, the proportion of global oil in primary energy consumption reached 40.4%, while coal dropped to 38.8%, which indicates that mankind has finally started the second energy revolution and officially entered the petroleum era from the coal era.

It can be said that the development of the petroleum industry in the recent 150 years can be roughly divided into three major stages. That is, onshore conventional oil and gas phases, offshore conventional oil and gas phases, and onshore unconventional oil and gas phases.

Petroleum exploration refers to the use of various exploration methods to understand the underground geological conditions in order to find and identify oil and gas resources, to understand oil production, oil storage,

Oil and gas extraction is the process of extracting oil and natural gas buried in underground oil layers from the ground. The way oil and gas are extracted from the ground to the ground can be divided into self-jetting and artificial lifting based on whether artificial energy is needed to supplement the wellbore fluid. Manual lifting oil production includes: gas lift oil production, rod pump oil extraction of oil pumping unit, electric centrifugal pump oil extraction of submersible oil, hydraulic piston pump oil production and jet pump oil production.

The oil storage and transportation project is to collect the untreated mixture of oil and natural gas distributed at various wellheads in the oil field, collect them by a certain method, measure them, and then collect them at the oil gathering station. After the preliminary separation, the oil and gas mixture is transferred to the joint station . At the joint station, the oil and gas mixture is separated and dehydrated by heating, the natural gas is de-lightened, and the sewage is sedimented and filtered to become stable crude oil, dry gas, light oil and purified produced water. Purified water is injected back into the oil layer, and the remaining three products are delivered separately through pipes and pumping stations.

It is an industry that uses petroleum as a raw material to produce chemicals, including natural gas chemical industry. The petrochemical industry is an emerging industry that has been formed with the development of the petroleum refining industry since the 1920s. After World War II, a large number of chemical raw materials and products were transferred from coal and its by-products to petroleum and natural gas as raw materials. Petrochemicals have become the basic industry of the chemical industry and occupy a very important position in the national economy . The raw materials of petrochemical industry are mainly various petroleum distillates and refinery gases produced during petroleum refining, as well as oil field gas and natural gas. After the 1970s, the petrochemical industry has established a complete technical system, and its products have been applied to various fields of national defense, national economy, and people's life. The output of major products such as ethylene, plastics, synthetic fibers, and synthetic rubber is commonly used internationally to measure the development level of petrochemicals. As petrochemical industry can create higher economic benefits, it has become an important basic industry in developed countries.

In the contemporary era, in order to improve economic benefits, the measures taken by petrochemical companies are: diversify the raw materials for ethylene production, and make the hydrocarbon cracking unit flexible to adapt to a variety of raw materials; the integrated structure of petrochemicals and refining is closer and fully utilized Various raw materials; improvement of process technology and use of new catalysts to improve product yield, reduce raw material consumption and energy consumption; adjust product structure, develop fine chemicals, and develop new products and materials with special properties and technology intensities. The pollution problem of petrochemical production environment is also gradually solved. ^[2]