Word: crude
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...share their own supplies so that the shortfall is held to no more than 7%. But even though some IEA nations, such as West Germany and Denmark, continue to rely on Iranian exports for as much as 10% of their petroleum supplies, sky-high prices and slumping demand for crude have already created a worldwide mini-glut of oil that would offset any loss. Because of surplus supplies, the price of oil in the so-called spot market has declined from $42 per bbl. early this year to around $33. Indeed, with storage tanks already filled to overflowing, the industrial...
Adel F. Sarofim, professor of engineering at MIT and a director of the Exxon-sponsored research project, said yesterday one of the project's goals is to discover clean combustion techniques for fossil fuels such as coal, coal liquids, shale oil and heavy crude oil. The fuels now require heavy preliminary refining...
...first glance, it looks like any other oilfield, with acre upon acre of pumps rhythmically nodding up and down as they suck up the crude oil trapped in rock below the surface. But the Guadalupe, Calif., oil patch 50 miles northwest of Santa Barbara is no ordinary oilfield. Like a growing number of production sites in California and Texas, Guadalupe is producing a gloppy goo that looks more like asphalt than normal petroleum. This is so-called heavy oil, a once rejected energy source that oilmen now believe may help diminish the nation's dependence on imported petroleum...
...going after domestic heavy crude, the U.S. could double its present oil reserves of 29 billion bbl. The leading heavy oil producer is Shell Oil, which is already pumping 85,000 bbl. of it per day. That is about 20% of the company's total U.S. output and nearly half the nation's total heavy oil production. The company last year paid an estimated $3.5 billion for the Kern County oilfields of Belridge Oil Co., which are believed to contain up to 375 million bbl. of heavy crude, by far the largest such deposit in the country...
Plentiful though it is, heavy oil poses problems that begin with getting it out of the ground. Because the crude is so sticky, less than 10% of it will flow to the surface by conventional pumping methods. One way to liquefy the goo is to force superheated steam into deep crude wells for as long as two weeks at pressures as high as 2,500 lbs. per sq. in. The extraction also requires huge amounts of energy. Just to heat enough steam to liquefy and then force three barrels of heavy oil up a well shaft can take as much...