GEOL 1040: Chapter 5 Energy from Fossil Fuels

Vocabulary flashcards covering the geology, exploration, extraction, global distribution, and processing of coal, petroleum, natural gas, oil sands, and oil shale.

Proved Coal Reserves

Quantities of coal (measured in tonnes) that geological and engineering data demonstrate can be recovered in the future from known reservoirs under current economic and operating conditions.

Room and Pillar Mining

An underground mining method in which pillars of coal are deliberately left behind on each side of excavated areas to support the overlying roof strata as extraction advances.

Continuous Mining Machine

A mechanized underground mining vehicle featuring a front rotating cutting drum that shears coal from the seam and an integrated conveyor belt that moves it to the rear for rail car or belt haulage.

Mine Subsidence

The sinking, settling, or collapse of the ground surface into abandoned underground mine workings, which can create large surface craters and endanger surface activities such as cattle grazing.

Cleats

Natural fracture systems within coal beds that allow desorbed coal bed methane ($CH_4$) to diffuse from micropores in the coal matrix and flow toward a wellbore.

GEM (Giant Earth Mover)

A massive power shovel operating in Ohio with a bucket capacity of $300\text{--}500\text{ metric tons}$ per load, built to strip off overburden rock and expose underlying coal seams.

Peat

A natural, renewable organic accumulation of partially decomposed vegetation covering approximately $4\%$ of the world's land surface, primarily in Northern Hemisphere temperate regions, that is dried and used as a fuel.

Drake Well (1859)

The pioneer commercial oil well drilled in 1859 by Edwin Drake along Oil Creek near Titusville, Pennsylvania, marking the commencement of the modern petroleum extraction industry.

Spindletop

A historic oil gusher in Southeast Texas that blew in on January 10, 1901, flowing at approximately $100{,}000\text{ barrels per day}$ and shooting crude oil to a height of $175\text{ feet}$.

Trans-Alaska Pipeline System

An 800-mile pipeline transporting crude oil south from Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope to the port of Valdez, engineered with above-ground supports and thermosyphons to prevent heat transfer from thawing the permafrost.

Dinoflagellates

Microscopic, single-celled floating marine plankton averaging about $0.55\text{ mm}$ in diameter whose lipid-rich biomass accumulates in marine sediments to form kerogen, oil, and natural gas.

Kerogen

Insoluble, solid organic matter formed during the diagenesis of buried planktonic and algae-rich sediments that thermally decomposes into liquid crude oil and natural gas under deeper burial conditions.

Oil Window (Oil Zone)

The subsurface depth interval (roughly $1\text{ to }3\text{ km}$) where temperature and pressure conditions during catagenesis are optimal for thermal conversion of kerogen into liquid petroleum.

Rotary Drilling Rig

A drilling structure that bores wellbores using four integrated systems: the rotary system (turntable, kelly, drill string), circulating system (mud pumps), hoisting system (derrick, drawworks), and power generators.

Blowout Preventer (BOP)

A heavy-duty, high-pressure safety valve stack installed beneath the rotary rig platform directly over the wellhead to seal the casing in the event of uncontrolled kicks or flow of formation fluids.

Deepwater Offshore Platform Types

Engineering designs used to produce petroleum offshore at varying depths, including Fixed Platforms ($\le 1650\text{ ft}$), Compliant Towers ($1500\text{--}3000\text{ ft}$), Tension Leg Platforms ($1500\text{--}7000\text{ ft}$), and SPAR Platforms ($2000\text{--}10{,}000\text{ ft}$).

Hydrocarbon Trap

A subsurface geological arrangement where permeable reservoir rocks are capped or sealed by impermeable strata, categorized structurally (anticlines, fault traps, salt domes) or stratigraphically (permeability pinch-outs, unconformities).

Directional Drilling

The technique of deviating a borehole along a predetermined non-vertical or horizontal trajectory to maximize contact length within thin, sloping, or fractured hydrocarbon-bearing reservoir zones.

Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR)

A United States emergency crude oil repository stored in artificially dissolved caverns within coastal salt domes across Texas and Louisiana (e.g., Bryan Mound, West Hackberry, Bayou Choctaw).

Primary Oil Recovery

The earliest production phase relying solely on natural reservoir energy drives (water drive, gas cap drive, solution gas drive) to push hydrocarbons into the well, recovering only about $30\%\text{ to }35\%$ of original oil in place.

Secondary and Enhanced Oil Recovery

Artificial drive methods applied after primary pressure depletes, such as waterflooding, carbon dioxide ($CO_2$) miscible flooding, thermal steam injection, or chemical flooding to displace trapped crude.

Petroleum Refining

The fractional distillation and chemical upgrading of crude oil into specific boiling-point fractions (gasoline, kerosene, diesel, lubricants, residuum), typically adding hydrogen to upgrade heavy fractions.

Megaprovince

An oil-producing geological province containing more than $100\text{ billion barrels}$ of original conventionally recoverable oil, uniquely represented globally by the Arabian-Iranian province ($626.3\text{ billion barrels}$).

Superprovince

A major petroleum province containing between $25\text{ and }100\text{ billion barrels}$ of conventionally recoverable oil, such as Maracaibo, West Siberian, Reforma-Campeche, Volga-Ural, Permian, and Sirte.

Double-Hulled Tanker

A modern commercial crude oil carrier designed with two separated fluid-tight hull layers to guard against spills into maritime waters during groundings or collisions, implemented following the Exxon Valdez disaster.

Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Carrier

A specialized cargo vessel carrying insulated spherical or membrane tanks designed to transport methane liquefied via refrigeration down to cryogenic temperatures across ocean routes.

Natural Bitumen

An extra-heavy, tar-like viscous hydrocarbon found within tar sands (such as Canada's Athabasca deposits) that is immobile at natural reservoir temperatures and must be mined or thermally softened to produce.

Oil Shale

A fine-grained, kerogen-bearing sedimentary rock that does not yield liquid petroleum naturally but produces synthetic crude oil and combustible gas when heated to $400^\circ\text{C to }500^\circ\text{C}$ in a retort.

In-Situ Oil Shale Retorting

A method of processing oil shale underground by fracturing the rock, injecting compressed air to initiate an advancing subsurface combustion zone, and collecting the thermally cracked vapors and oil from recovery wells ahead of the flame front.

1990–1991 Kuwait Oil Fires

An extensive environmental and energy disaster at the conclusion of the Persian Gulf War in which retreating Iraqi troops ignited hundreds of Kuwaiti oil wells, producing plumes of smoke that burned for up to six months.