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48-451: The SS Puerto Rican , was an American-flagged tanker disabled by an explosion on October 31, 1984. The 20,295  GRT , 632 ft (192.6 m), tanker was owned by Bankers Trust Company and operated by Keystone Shipping Co. of Philadelphia which burned in an explosion with the stern section sinking just hours after leaving San Francisco bound for New Orleans with a cargo of 91,984 barrels of lubricating oil and additives. In addition to

96-456: A book by William Davies , an early tanker captain, was published in 1903, although Davies had printed earlier versions himself. Including his calculations on the expansion and contraction of bulk oil, and other information for tanker officers, it went into multiple editions, and in 1915 The Petroleum World commented that it was "the standard book for computations and conversions." Oil industry The petroleum industry , also known as

144-624: A crew member were thrown into the sea. The pilot boat San Francisco rescued the badly injured pilot and mate, but the crewman was lost. As fire raged on board, the Coast Guard towed the crippled ship further out to sea, to keep her from breaking up and dumping her cargo near San Francisco Bay. On November 1, a storm passed through the area, battering the Puerto Rican with 35-mile-per-hour winds and 16-foot-high seas. That evening, after 32 hours of effort, navy fireboats finally extinguished

192-503: A critical concern for many nations. Oil accounts for a large percentage of the world's energy consumption , ranging from a low of 32% for Europe and Asia, to a high of 53% for the Middle East. Other geographic regions' consumption patterns are as follows: South and Central America (44%), Africa (41%), and North America (40%). The world consumes 36 billion barrels (5.8 km ) of oil per year, with developed nations being

240-548: A drilling/production oil-platform in 20 ft (6.1 m) of water some 18 miles off Vermilion Parish, Louisiana . Kerr-McGee Oil Industries, as operator for partners Phillips Petroleum ( ConocoPhillips ) and Stanolind Oil & Gas ( BP ), completed its historic Ship Shoal Block 32 well in November 1947, months before Superior actually drilled a discovery from their Vermilion platform farther offshore. In any case, that made Kerr-McGee's Gulf of Mexico well, Kermac No. 16,

288-515: A lighting and heating fuel, the demand for petroleum increased greatly, and by the early twentieth century had become the most valuable commodity traded on world markets. Imperial Russia produced 3,500 tons of oil in 1825 and doubled its output by mid-century. After oil drilling began in the region of present-day Azerbaijan in 1846, in Baku , the Russian Empire built two large pipelines:

336-557: A market share. For example: Midstream operations are sometimes classified within the downstream sector, but these operations compose a separate and discrete sector of the petroleum industry. Midstream operations and processes include the following: While some upstream companies carry out certain midstream operations, the midstream sector is dominated by a number of companies that specialize in these services. Midstream companies include: The oil and gas industry spends only 0.4% of its net sales on research & development (R&D) which

384-433: A relatively new concept, dating from the later years of the 19th century. Before this, technology had simply not supported the idea of carrying bulk liquids. The market was also not geared towards transporting or selling cargo in bulk, therefore most ships carried a wide range of different products in different holds and traded outside fixed routes. Liquids were usually loaded in casks—hence the term " tonnage ", which refers to

432-535: A result of this spill; another 1,368 were recovered. Tanker (ship) Tankers can range in size of capacity from several hundred tons , which includes vessels for servicing small harbours and coastal settlements, to several hundred thousand tons, for long-range haulage. Besides ocean- or seagoing tankers there are also specialized inland-waterway tankers which operate on rivers and canals with an average cargo capacity up to some thousand tons. A wide range of products are carried by tankers, including: Tankers are

480-735: A single product or simultaneously transport mixed cargoes such as several different chemicals or refined petroleum products. Among oil tankers, supertankers are designed for transporting oil around the Horn of Africa from the Middle East . The supertanker Seawise Giant , scrapped in 2010, was 458 meters (1,503 ft) in length and 69 meters (226 ft) wide. Supertankers are one of the three preferred methods for transporting large quantities of oil, along with pipeline transport and rail . Tighter regulation means that tankers now cause fewer environmental disasters resulting from oil spills than in

528-652: Is generally accepted that oil is formed mostly from the carbon rich remains of ancient plankton after exposure to heat and pressure in Earth 's crust over hundreds of millions of years. Over time, the decayed residue was covered by layers of mud and silt, sinking further down into Earth's crust and preserved there between hot and pressured layers, gradually transforming into oil reservoirs . Petroleum in an unrefined state has been utilized by humans for over 5000 years. Oil in general has been used since early human history to keep fires ablaze and in warfare . Its importance to

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576-521: Is in comparison with a range of other industries the lowest share. Governments such as the United States government provide a heavy public subsidy to petroleum companies , with major tax breaks at various stages of oil exploration and extraction, including the costs of oil field leases and drilling equipment. In recent years, enhanced oil recovery techniques – most notably multi-stage drilling and hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") – have moved to

624-597: Is often employed by means of aerobic degradation. More recently, other bioremediative methods have been explored such as phytoremediation and thermal remediation. The industry is the largest industrial source of emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), a group of chemicals that contribute to the formation of ground-level ozone ( smog ). The combustion of fossil fuels produces greenhouse gases and other air pollutants as by-products. Pollutants include nitrogen oxides , sulphur dioxide , volatile organic compounds and heavy metals . Researchers have discovered that

672-430: Is usually divided into three major components: upstream , midstream , and downstream . Upstream regards exploration and extraction of crude oil , midstream encompasses transportation and storage of crude, and downstream concerns refining crude oil into various end products . Petroleum is vital to many industries, and is necessary for the maintenance of industrial civilization in its current configuration, making it

720-552: The Guinness brewery used tankers to transport the stout across the Irish Sea . Different products require different handling and transport, with specialised variants such as " chemical tankers ", " oil tankers ", and " LNG carriers " developed to handle dangerous chemicals, oil and oil-derived products, and liquefied natural gas respectively. These broad variants may be further differentiated with respect to ability to carry only

768-537: The United States Maritime Administration 's statistics count 4,024 tankers of 10,000 LT  DWT or greater worldwide. 2,582 of these are double-hulled. Panama is the leading flag state of tankers, with 592 registered ships. Five other flag states have more than two hundred registered tankers: Liberia (520), The Marshall Islands (323), Greece (233), Singapore (274) and The Bahamas (215). These flag states are also

816-480: The average freight rate assessment (AFRA) system, which classifies tankers of different sizes. To make it an independent instrument, Shell consulted the London Tanker Brokers' Panel (LTBP) . At first, they divided the groups as General Purpose for tankers under 25,000 tons deadweight (DWT); Medium Range for ships between 25,000 and 45,000  DWT and Large Range (later Long Range) for

864-468: The oil industry , includes the global processes of exploration , extraction , refining , transportation (often by oil tankers and pipelines ), and marketing of petroleum products . The largest volume products of the industry are fuel oil and gasoline (petrol). Petroleum is also the raw material for many chemical products , including pharmaceuticals , solvents , fertilizers , pesticides , synthetic fragrances , and plastics . The industry

912-582: The petrochemical industry can produce ground-level ozone pollution at higher amounts in winter than in summer. Greenhouse gases caused by burning fossil fuels drive climate change . In 1959, at a symposium organised by the American Petroleum Institute for the centennial of the American oil industry , the physicist Edward Teller warned of the danger of global climate change . Edward Teller explained that carbon dioxide "in

960-512: The world economy however, evolved slowly, with whale oil being used for lighting in the 19th century and wood and coal used for heating and cooking well into the 20th century. Even though the Industrial Revolution generated an increasing need for energy, this was initially met mainly by coal, and from other sources including whale oil. However, when it was discovered that kerosene could be extracted from crude oil and used as

1008-590: The 1880s. In the early 1930s the Texas Company developed the first mobile steel barges for drilling in the brackish coastal areas of the Gulf of Mexico . In 1937 Pure Oil Company (now part of Chevron Corporation ) and its partner Superior Oil Company (now part of ExxonMobil Corporation ) used a fixed platform to develop a field in 14 feet (4.3 m) of water, one mile (1.6 km) offshore of Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana . In early 1947 Superior Oil erected

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1056-415: The 1970s. Amoco Cadiz , Braer , Erika , Exxon Valdez , Prestige and Torrey Canyon were examples of accidents. Oil spills from tankers amounted to around 1,000 tonnes in 2020 from three incidents (an all-time low), down from 636,000 tonnes from 92 incidents in 1979 - a fall of 99.8%. Many modern tankers are designed for a specific cargo and a specific route. Draft is typically limited by

1104-625: The 833 km long pipeline to transport oil from the Caspian to the Black Sea port of Batum (Baku-Batum pipeline), completed in 1906, and the 162 km long pipeline to carry oil from Chechnya to the Caspian. The first drilled oil wells in Baku were built in 1871–1872 by Ivan Mirzoev , an Armenian businessman who is referred to as one of the 'founding fathers' of Baku's oil industry. At

1152-527: The East Indies oil-supply (especially via submarine campaigns ) considerably weakened Japan in the latter part of the war. After World War II ended in 1945, the countries of the Middle East took the lead in oil production from the United States. Important developments since World War II include deep-water drilling, the introduction of the drillship , and the growth of a global shipping network for petroleum – relying upon oil tankers and pipelines. In 1949

1200-779: The Middle East. The expansion of Imperial Japan to the south aimed largely at accessing the oil-fields of the Dutch East Indies. Germany, cut off from sea-borne oil supplies by Allied blockade , failed in Operation Edelweiss to secure the Caucasus oil-fields for the Axis military in 1942, while Romania deprived the Wehrmacht of access to Ploesti oilfields – the largest in Europe – from August 1944. Cutting off

1248-764: The advent of hydraulic fracturing and other horizontal drilling techniques, shale play has seen an enormous uptick in production. Areas of shale such as the Permian Basin and Eagle-Ford have become huge hotbeds of production for the largest oil corporations in the United States. The American Petroleum Institute divides the petroleum industry into five sectors: Oil companies used to be classified by sales as " supermajors " ( BP , Chevron , ExxonMobil , ConocoPhillips , Shell , Eni and TotalEnergies ), "majors", and "independents" or "jobbers". In recent years however, National Oil Companies (NOC, as opposed to IOC, International Oil Companies) have come to control

1296-527: The area. Canada's first gusher (flowing well) erupted on January 16, 1862, when local oil-man John Shaw struck oil at 158 feet (48 m). For a week the oil gushed unchecked at levels reported as high as 3,000 barrels per day. The first modern oil-drilling in the United States began in West Virginia and Pennsylvania in the 1850s. Edwin Drake 's 1859 well near Titusville, Pennsylvania , typically considered

1344-628: The atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect " and that burning more fossil fuels could "melt the icecaps and submerge New York". The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , founded by the United Nations in 1988, concludes that human-sourced greenhouse gases are responsible for most of the observed temperature increase since the middle of the twentieth century. As a result of climate change concerns, many people have begun using other methods of energy such as solar and wind. This recent shift has some petroleum enthusiasts skeptical about

1392-516: The cargo the ship was fueled with 8,500 barrels of Heavy Fuel Oil (Bunker C) before departure. The ship had departed just after midnight and was in the process of disembarking the pilot at 3:24 a.m. when an explosion occurred near the No. 6 center-independent tank blowing the pilot Captain James S. Nolan and two crew members into the water. The pilot boat San Francisco rescued the pilot and one of

1440-513: The depth of water in loading and unloading harbors; and may be limited by the depth of straits or canals along the preferred shipping route. Cargoes with high vapor pressure at ambient temperatures may require pressurized tanks or vapor recovery systems. Tank heaters may be required to maintain heavy crude oil , residual fuel , asphalt , wax , or molasses in a fluid state for offloading. Tankers used for liquid fuels are classified according to their capacity. In 1954, Shell Oil developed

1488-624: The fire. On November 3, 30 miles southwest of the Golden Gate, she broke up, her stern section sinking to a depth of 1500 feet within the boundaries of the Gulf of the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary . Over a million and a quarter gallons of refined petroleum products, about one-third of Puerto Rican's cargo, went into the water. In the days after the explosion, there were intimations in

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1536-523: The first ever well drilled with percussion tools to a depth of 21 meters for oil exploration. In 1878 Ludvig Nobel and his Branobel company "revolutionized oil transport" by commissioning the first oil tanker and launching it on the Caspian Sea . Samuel Kier established America's first oil refinery in Pittsburgh on Seventh avenue near Grant Street in 1853. Ignacy Łukasiewicz built one of

1584-555: The first modern oil-refineries near Jasło (then in the Austrian dependent Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria in Central European Galicia ), present-day Poland, in 1854–56. Galician refineries were initially small, as demand for refined fuel was limited. The refined products were used in artificial asphalt, machine oil and lubricants, in addition to Łukasiewicz's kerosene lamp . As kerosene lamps gained popularity,

1632-617: The first offshore oil-drilling at Oil Rocks (Neft Dashlari) in the Caspian Sea off Azerbaijan eventually resulted in a city built on pylons. In the 1960s and 1970s, multi-governmental organizations of oil–producing nations – OPEC and OAPEC – played a major role in setting petroleum prices and policy. Oil spills and their cleanup have become an issue of increasing political, environmental, and economic importance. New fields of hydrocarbon production developed in places such as Siberia, Sakhalin , Venezuela and North and West Africa. With

1680-578: The first oil discovery drilled out of sight of land. Forty-four Gulf of Mexico exploratory wells discovered 11 oil and natural gas fields by the end of 1949. During World War II (1939–1945) control of oil supply from Romania, Baku, the Middle East and the Dutch East Indies played a huge role in the events of the war and the ultimate victory of the Allies . The Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran (1941) secured Allied control of oil-production in

1728-631: The first true modern oil well , touched off a major boom. In the first quarter of the 20th century, the United States overtook Russia as the world's largest oil producer. By the 1920s, oil fields had been established in many countries including Canada, Poland, Sweden, Ukraine, the United States, Peru and Venezuela. The first successful oil tanker , the Zoroaster , was built in 1878 in Sweden, designed by Ludvig Nobel . It operated from Baku to Astrakhan . A number of new tanker designs developed in

1776-812: The forefront of the industry as this new technology plays a crucial and controversial role in new methods of oil extraction. Some petroleum industry operations have been responsible for water pollution through by-products of refining and oil spills . Though hydraulic fracturing has significantly increased natural gas extraction, there is some belief and evidence to support that consumable water has seen increased in methane contamination due to this gas extraction. Leaks from underground tanks and abandoned refineries may also contaminate groundwater in surrounding areas. Hydrocarbons that comprise refined petroleum are resistant to biodegradation and have been found to remain present in contaminated soils for years. To hasten this process, bioremediation of petroleum hydrocarbon pollutants

1824-417: The largest consumers. The United States consumed 18% of the oil produced in 2015. The production, distribution, refining, and retailing of petroleum taken as a whole represents the world's largest industry in terms of dollar value. Petroleum is a naturally occurring liquid found in rock formations. It consists of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights, plus other organic compounds. It

1872-494: The media of sabotage linked to a labor dispute. The vessel had been picketed in a Bay Area port and some of its crew harassed by maritime union pickets. The FBI intervened, but it was quickly determined that no point source explosion had occurred. Later it was found that the explosion probably resulted from holes in tank compartment bulkheads that allowed caustic soda to mix with zinc, forming deadly hydrogen gas that then exploded. A Coast Guard board of investigation attributed this to

1920-412: The negligence of the ship's officers on the inbound voyage from Long Beach. But no cause of the explosion could be established with certainty. The environmental impact was significant. In addition to the initial spill, the sunken stern section continued to discharge heavy bunker oil – as much as 8,000 barrels – for months and possibly years afterwards. An estimated 4,815 seabirds were killed by oiling as

1968-590: The refining industry grew in the area. The first commercial oil-well in Canada became operational in 1858 at Oil Springs, Ontario (then Canada West ). Businessman James Miller Williams dug several wells between 1855 and 1858 before discovering a rich reserve of oil four metres below ground. Williams extracted 1.5 million litres of crude oil by 1860, refining much of it into kerosene-lamp oil. Some historians challenge Canada's claim to North America's first oil field , arguing that Pennsylvania 's famous Drake Well

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2016-558: The rights over the largest oil reserves; by this measure the top ten companies all are NOC. The following table shows the ten largest national oil companies ranked by reserves and by production in 2012. Most upstream work in the oil field or on an oil well is contracted out to drilling contractors and oil field service companies. Aside from the NOCs which dominate the Upstream sector, there are many international companies that have

2064-499: The then-enormous ships that were larger than 45,000  DWT . The ships became larger during the 1970s, and the list was extended, where the tons are metric tonnes : At nearly 380 vessels in the size range 279,000 t  DWT to 320,000 t  DWT , these are by far the most popular size range among the larger VLCCs. Only seven vessels are larger than this, and approximately 90 between 220,000 t  DWT and 279,000 t  DWT . [REDACTED] As of 2005,

2112-561: The top six in terms of fleet size in terms of deadweight tonnage . Greece, Japan, and the United States are the top three owners of tankers (including those owned but registered to other nations ), with 733, 394, and 311 vessels respectively. These three nations account for 1,438 vessels or over 36% of the world's fleet. Asian companies dominate the construction of tankers. Of the world's 4,024 tankers, 2,822 (over 70%) were built in South Korea, Japan and China. Petroleum Tables ,

2160-602: The turn of the 20th century, Imperial Russia's output of oil, almost entirely from the Apsheron Peninsula , accounted for half of the world's production and dominated international markets. Nearly 200 small refineries operated in the suburbs of Baku by 1884. As a side effect of these early developments, the Apsheron Peninsula emerged as the world's "oldest legacy of oil pollution and environmental negligence". In 1846 Baku (Bibi-Heybat settlement) featured

2208-467: The two crew members. The ship was eight miles off the Golden Gate bridge on October 31, 1984, at 3:24 a.m., when she was torn by a very large double explosion just forward of her deck house. A 100-foot section of deck, the whole width of the vessel, was thrown up and then back down forward on the deck in front of it, as flames shot hundreds of feet in the air. A bar pilot, the third mate, and

2256-581: The volume of the holds in terms of how many tuns or casks of wine could be carried. Even potable water, vital for the survival of the crew, was stowed in casks. Carrying bulk liquids in earlier ships posed several problems: Tankers were first used by the oil industry to transfer refined fuel in bulk from refineries to customers. This would then be stored in large tanks ashore, and subdivided for delivery to individual locations. The use of tankers caught on because other liquids were also cheaper to transport in bulk, store in dedicated terminals, then subdivide. Even

2304-411: Was the continent's first. But there is evidence to support Williams, not least of which is that the Drake well did not come into production until August 28, 1859. The controversial point might be that Williams found oil above bedrock while Edwin Drake 's well located oil within a bedrock reservoir . The discovery at Oil Springs touched off an oil boom which brought hundreds of speculators and workers to

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