Part II

Once oil is found it must be extracted. After the drilling site has been prepared the rig is to be constructed. The rig is known to consist of surface equipment and a derrick which houses drilling tools. The derrick is used to lift sections of pipe which are lowered into the hole made by the drill. To get oil and gas out of the ground is not easy.

Sophisticated techniques and equipment must be used to extract the most out of every oil and gas deposit. Experts consider oil recovery to depend in much on natural pressure. Under natural pressure oil flows freely and it is called the natural flow. It is the most economic period of a well life. If oil wells have too little energy to produce oil efficiently, additional energy must be supplied by pumps or other artificial means.

Crude oil must be transported from the fields where it is produced to the places where it is consumed. Pipelines are likely to be the main means of oil transportation. But tankers, barges, tank tracks, and railroad tank cars are thought to be of no less importance. The latest discoveries of welding methods, construction practices and new materials have extended pipeline transportation into harsh environments and deep waters. All the means of transportation carry oil from wells to storage tanks or directly to refineries. Pipelines also carry petroleum products from refineries to markets. Some of the largest pipelines are to carry more than a million barrels of oil daily.

The basic job of a refinery is to convert petroleum into useful products. As mentioned above, crude oil consists chiefly of hydrocarbons. Refineries are to separate oil into various hydrocarbon groups, or fractions, distillation being the first step of refining. The fractions are then chemically changed and treated with other substances. The refining processes may be classified as separation, conversion and chemical treatment. The latest improvements in refining maybe said to have saved billions of barrels of crude.

Distribution and marketing appear to be the final links in the petroleum industry chain that begins hundreds of meters below the ground and ends in your home.

Text 2

Read, translate the text "Creekology" and make the annotation of it.

Creekology

Finding oil and getting its products to market have intrigued us for about 150 years. The search, however, was not always as high-tech as it is now. Our industry began, of course, with Col. Drake and his famous well in 1859. The first wells were drilled near oil seeps because, obviously, oil was there. But after the oil seeps were covered, new methods of finding it had to be found. Some of the early "science" is worth looking at.

One of the first theories was that underground pools of oil ran parallel to creeks and rivers and that drilling in creek beds would yield the prize. I mink they called this «creekology». This theory led to Oil Creek and the Allegheny River in Pennsylvania (along with every stream leading into them) to be lined with operators. It was a very popular and successful method until one day in the late 1860s when Pennsylvania suffered very heavy rains and the industry was flushed away. Survivors began checking higher ground for oil.

Oil was everywhere and sometimes could be found by accident. One day, a fire broke out in the kitchen of a boarding house in a small oil-area town. Buckets of water were quickly brought from the nearest well. But the fire wasn't going out. In fact, the water seemed to be feeding the fire. The well was found to have several inches of oil in it. Water was brought from other wells nearby, but with the same result. This story is related in "Oil Region Reminiscences'', published in 1907. It doesn't give us the fate of the boarding house but does say that the town's residents were quite happy to find oil seeping into the water wells. All of them were scooping and bailing oil and dreaming of what to do with all the money they would be making. And then the pipeline company fixed the leak in its line that ran over the hill behind town.

Text 3

Read, translate the text "How are oil and natural gas produced?" and make the annotation of it.