PETROL PRODUCTION

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 71, 20 September 1930, Page 29

PETROL PRODUCTION

TRIUMPH OF SCIENCE

A BETTERING OF NATURE

The actual fact of the recent fuel war in the United States is no doubt known to most motorists, also the fact that the tronblo arose from overproduction,* but what that over-pro-duction consists of is probably less well known. It is not merely a case of the sinking of many wells but of the method of treatment of tho raw product from these wells to produce the highly volatile petrol. Actually it is the result cf the march of science and not of the commercial activity of people who want to achieve wealth in a hurry.

What petroleum is has not been definitely decided. Scientists know that it is the product of decomposing organic matter, but whether animal or vegetable they are not sure. Probably this extinct life was of marine origin. The mud in which its remains were deposited turned into porous rock, and this rock, underlying what are now the world's producing oil regions, was thrust np into domes and the oil distilled by natural forces. When a dome is properly tapped the gas forces the oil above the surface, and the well flows until the gas pressure is exhausted. The average life of a well is five years, though wells have been known to produce as long as 25 years. The continuation of the supply of petroleum, therefore, demands a constant exploration of new territory and constant sinking of new wells. This process a few years ago was a subject of the utmost concern, there being a general belief that the world's supply of petroleum must necessarily soon be used up, and at one stage it was authoritatively declared that the visible supply at the then rate of consumption was sufficient for only seven years. The scaremongers, however, were in due time put to silence and when such alarms are sounded now they are only an echo from ignorant— or interested—quarters of what was a popular belief till within the last three or four years. •

: The possibility of a limited supply, however, bore fruit in an intensive application on the part of science to

research work in .connection .with petroleum and its products, and tho chief result of this has been the production of an ever-increasing proportion of petrol from the amount of petroleum handled. The processes are what is known as "cracking." Cracking consists in juggling molecules and atoms around under great pressure at high temperatures until they do what tho chemists want them to do. Sometimes molecules are pulled apart into their constituent atoms, and allowed to recombine. Sometimes ono atom is shot off each molecule. Sometimes an atom is added to each molecule., This range into the higher realms of physics has had astounding results. As a commercial process, cracking goes back less than twenty years. The first highly successful process was that invented by Dr. William M. Burton, a chemist in the employ of the Standard Oil Company of Indiana. Dr. Burton, after three or four years of research, produced the so-called Burton process in 1912. To perfect this method the Standard Oil Company is said to have spent a million dollars. Burton employed the so-called bulb process, which is now being superseded by the "tube" process. Burton used a temperature of 700 degrees Fahrenheit, and a pressure of 95 pounds to the square inch. The latest cracking process is said to employ the tremendous pressure of 4000 pounds and temperatures running as high as 900 degrees Fahrenheit.

The details of cracking are complicated, but the effect is not hard to understand. The simplest form of refinery merely "skims" or "tops" the crude oil, taking off the petrol and kerosene and leaving a residiuin of fuel oil. The so-called "straight-run" plants distill petroleum without venturing into higher chemistry. They are able to separate such petrol as actually exists in the crude product. But cracking does not merely extract petrol. It manufactures it. The percentage of petrol in crude oil is 30. or more, depending on the oil's ancestry and previous history, and depending also on what refiners choose to call petrol. In 1899 petrol was only. 12.8 per cent, of the crude oil as put through the stills. By 1923 the refiners were getting 30.9 per cent, of petrol. n 1928 the percentage was 41.14 per cent. For the first eleven months of 1929 it was 43.78 per cent. For November, 1929, it was 46 per cent. Commercially, the result

was an over-production of petrol. Scientifically, it was a triumph. But early this year a still greater marvel was announced. This was the discovery of tho so-called "hydrogenation process." This process, perfected by the Standard Oil of New Jersey, is the work of a German inventor, Dr. Friederich Bergius, of Heidelberg. It consists, as it is described, in the addition of hydrogen gas to tho crude oil at enormous temperatures and under great pressures. It has been authoritatively stated that this process will yield 100 gallons of petrol by volume for every 100 gallons of crude oil. This is apparently dono by breaking up, reeombining, and building up the molecules constituting the natural petroleum. It has even been asserted that this process can be applied to produce "petrol and other wanted products," including lubricating oil, from coal and from shale. Thus, at a bound the potential supply of petrol is vastly expanded, though at the possible cost of diminishing the supply of fuel oil and other products." Cracking, however, is but one of the improved processes which have aided in the conservation or fuller utilisation of petroleum deposits. It has been estimated that under conditions which prevailed until very recently from 30 to 90 per cent, of the the petroleum content of a field was left in the ground after the wejls were abandoned. The oil is most readily obtained when forced up by the pressure of natural gas, but when this has ceased it has sometimes been found possible to repressure the well by pumping compressed gas into the oil-bearing sands. A second and more important means is to drill more deeply. The great Santa Fe Springs pool in California has been tapped by numerous wells below the 7500 ft level, and in the Big Lake field in Texas there is a producing well more than 8500 ft deep. Many other economies, but not of the spectacular nature of those outlined above, have been introduced into the oil industry, chiefly greater efficiency in plants, and what the sum total of the improvements mean may perhaps best be gathered from the consideration that in the decade from 1916 to 1927 the progress made was such as to represent in the United States alone a saving equivalent to 5,766,600,----000 barrels of crude oil, enough to provide the United States at the present rate of consumption for five years, arid incidentally, it may be remarked, nearly as much as, so recently as five years ago, some people were pronouncing as the visible supply. ■ ■ .

Four hundred and ninety-eight thousand five hundred and seventy motorcycles were made in different parts of the world in 1929, says "Motor Cycling." This figures exceeds that of 1928 by 25 per cent. Great Britain produces about one-third of the world's total.