Tech News: Petroleum Producers - Friend or Foe?

Here's a interesting read....

You should know where your oil comes from. (USA).

We hear it regularly. "Those #@&% foreigners and their #@&% oil!" But who are these people?

Where do our petro dollars really go?

An accurate up-to-date assessment is only a couple clicks away at the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration. The answer may surprise you.

About 1/3 of our crude oil supplies come from domestic sourcing. (This figure could be increased, but there's prudence in maintaining domestic reserves.) Of the remaining 2/3, month after month, year after year, two countries — Canada and Mexico — regularly appear at the top of E.I.A.'s list of crude oil imports. That is, largely for economic, geographical, political and commercial reasons, our two most important crude oil suppliers are also our nearest and friendliest neighbors.

Here are our top ten crude oil suppliers, averaged in terms of thousands of barrels per day, year-to-date, June 29, 2009.

In fact (and in full disclosure), Mexico and Saudi Arabia have been known to swap places in the tally now and then. Mexico's supplies are abundant and nearby, but typically heavy and high in sulfur. Saudi Arabian Light is a world standard of light-density crude.

Also, "Sweet Crude" is more than a recent documentary about the oil-rich Niger Delta. Nigerian Bonny Light is the world standard for low sulfur content, what's known in the trade as "sweetness." In fact, it contains 1/10 the sulfur of Arabian Light. Our own West Texas Intermediate, also known as Texas Sweet Light, is almost as sweet.

Each crude stock has costs and benefits in optimizing refinery operation. Following economic principles of supply and demand — and corporate return on investment — our strategy involving foreign petroleum sourcing appears to be well diversified and not at all irrational.

Some points to consider: About 60 percent of our crude imports, and thus around 40 percent of our total appetite, comes from the Western Hemisphere. The Persian Gulf contributes about 24 percent of the imports, around 16 percent of our total, similar to the Canadian contribution.

How long will this good fortune continue with our neighbors to the north? It is generally estimated that Canada's conventional petroleum reserves have already peaked. But include its tar sands, and Canada's reserves are second in size only to Saudi Arabia's.

And they're a whole lot closer.

Source;
http://www.roadandtrack.com/article.asp?section_id=36&article_id=8243

20 Things You Didn't Know About OIL

I thought that is might be appropriate considering what is going on in the world today. Pretty cool article.

1 This list is about black gold. Texas tea. Petroleum, or crude oil. Which is in no way related to the oils we eat or excrete.

2 If you are a creationist, crude oil was formed by thousands of years of heat and pressure applied to the carcasses of plants and animals that died in the Great Flood. If you’re not, you think oil comes from dinosaurs, right?

3 Wrong. Almost all oil comes from pressure-cooking dead zooplankton and algae—pond scum, in other words—which are among the oldest and most abundant life forms on earth.

4 Don’t blame the Hummers. That pond scum ultimately produced trillions upon trillions of gallons of oil. But most of it bubbled up to the surface long ago and was consumed by greedy bacteria.

5 Oil companies seek the small fraction that remains, spending more than $150 billion a year hunting for new reserves.

6 Fashion march of the penguins: Thousands of tiny, colorful sweaters have been knit for these flightless birds, to keep them from preening themselves if they are doused in oil from a spill.

7 When you buy gasoline, you might want to make your purchase at night—it will be cheaper. Gasoline becomes more dense in cooler temperatures, and gas pumps measure gas by volume.

8 A tip for trippers: Keep your windows closed at high speeds—drag from open windows can reduce a car’s fuel efficiency by 10 percent.

9 Neatness counts too: Cleaning 100 pounds of junk from your car will get you up to 2 percent more miles per gallon.

10 Another trip tip: Instead of taking a break for lunch at a restaurant, cook food on your engine. Find out how (and get a recipe for Hyundai Halibut With Fennel) in the classic book Manifold Destiny.

11 The recipe for gasoline itself is complex. Depending on the blend, it can contain between 150 and 1,000 different chemical compounds.

12 Tighten your gas cap. A leaking or missing cap can release 30 gallons of fuel per year into the atmosphere.

13 In California alone, vapors from gas stations account for enough gasoline to fill two tanker trucks every day.

14 Speaking of tankers, that truck you’re trying to pass may be carrying 4,000 gallons of gas, which, if in a crash, can explode with the energy of 200 tons of TNT.

15 By the eighth century, a petroleum industry already existed in the Middle East. The streets of Baghdad were paved with tar derived from petroleum.

16 In oil-rich Baku, Azerbaijan, north of Iran, villagers could once dig a hole in the ground with their hands, drop in a live coal, and start a fire.

17 In the United States, when people first noticed oil, they didn’t quite grasp the energy angle. Instead they did what any industrious American would do: They bottled it, slapped a label on, and sold it as a health tonic.

18 Several hundred thousand bottles of the stuff are said to have been purchased and, perhaps, consumed.

19 Since they moved on from the health drink angle, Americans have laid down 161,000 miles of fuel pipeline in the United States. That’s more than half the distance to the moon.

20 Spies like pipelines. Engineers use a robotic device known as a smart pig to inspect pipelines from the inside. Two James Bond movies so far have made oil pipelines and pigs part of the plot: The Living Daylights and The World Is Not Enough. You will have to wait until November to see if the pattern is repeated in the next Bond installment, Quantum of Solace.

Source;
http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jul/20-things-you-didn.t-know-about-oil