Every single day, many people across the world use hundreds of things that are powered by gas. In fact, each week in Britain, there are around two million tonnes of oil and gas produced, which is worth around £37 million a day to the people of Britain.
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We all know that oil is extremely important – I mean, there are actual wars fought over it – but do we actually know why it is so important and where it originally came from?
Sea inhabitants
There are thousands of tiny animals and plants living in the sea, they are known as plankton. These plankton get their energy from sunlight and, when they die, they sink to the bottom of the sea. It is those plankton that died millions of years ago that are the source of the oil and gas that we use today.
Buried
These dead sea creatures are buried at the bottom of the sea by mud and sand. These buried plankton are said to store the sun’s energy that they required to survive and begin to decay.
Turning into oil
Over millions of years, the dead animals get buried deeper and deeper into the bottom of the sea. The temperature and pressure deep underground turn the chemicals from the decaying animals and plants into crude oil and gas.
Trapped oil and gas
Oil and gas move between porous rocks and move upwards from the source area of where they were originally formed. When they hit a layer of cap rock, which has no spaces between the grains, the oil and gas get trapped.
Drilling down
Finding oil underground and drilling a well to obtain it are very complicated and expensive procedures. It actually costs millions of pounds to drill a well and only a few are successful. Often there is a mix of water, crude oil and gas and the crude oil and gas need to be separated before they can be transported safely.
Transportation
The oil and gas needs to be transported from the sea to an oil refinery, often through a pipeline or a tanker. Because crude oil is often found in remote places like deserts, jungles or the Arctic, the transportation process can sometimes be a little difficult.
When it finally reaches the oil refinery, crude oil turns into useful products and materials that are transported all over Britain and abroad.
These products can then be transported through pipelines, by road, by rail or by boats around the coast or along rivers and canals.
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SLR is an environmental consultancy in the UK, specialising in mining consulting and environmental consulting.
