Hello! Welcome to The Nairaland Association of Petroleum Engineers Club, and thanks for taking the time to look at this text. This thread is targeted at undergraduate and graduate students of Petroleum Engineering. Industry Experts and Petroleum Professionals are also welcome to share their valuable experiences and opinions on a diverse range of topics.

The primary mission of this forum is to create a high-quality discussion environment to promulgate technical knowledge relative to the exploration and production of oil and gas and state-of-the-art technologies in the industry to enhance our technical knowledge base and competence. We will also be talking about assignments, final year project, MSc Thesis, PhD Dissertation, Independent research, technical paper writing, software development/programming for the oil and gas industry etc, without leaving out issues and opportunities facing the upstream petroleum industry.

Feel free to share important information, petroleum news, jobs, tips for self-improvement etc. Please endeavour to be a contributor as this forum will host discussions on a variety of topics, and we always want to keep the conversation welcoming, inclusive, and a positive experience. It’s really important we make this thread to be educative, informative, fun-filled and enlightening. This thread will also serve as a platform to improve your networking skills.

Please register your interest by introducing yourself or you can tell us about yourself.

Present Sir.

Three7Ty9: Present Sir.

You're highly welcome.

Posterity will discredit me if i don't follow this thread.

* Grabs a pen and a paper, takes a seat and listens attentively to the bosses in the house *

HISTORY OF OIL -A CASE OF FAILED PREDICTION

Did You Know?
Edwin Drake drilled the first oil well in Pennsylvania in 1859
An Unlikely Character Began the Modern Oil Industry

But before that, did you know that Drillers whom Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859 predicted that he would fail. Please see this excerpt below:

"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy!" Thus said the associates of Edwin L. Drake, refusing his suggestion to drill for oil in 1859. In that same year his 69-foot-deep oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania delivered 15 barrels of oil per day.

How did it happen?

The history of the oil business as we know it began in 1859 in Pennsylvania, thanks to Edwin L. Drake, a career railroad conductor who devised a way to drill a practical oil well.

Before Drake sank his first well in Titusville, Pennsylvania, people around the world had gathered oil for centuries around "seeps," places where oil naturally rose to the surface and came out of the ground. The problem with collecting oil in that manner was that even productive areas didn't yield large amounts of oil.

In the 1850s, new types of machinery being produced increasingly needed oil for lubrication. And the main sources for oil at the time, whaling and collecting oil from seeps, couldn't meet the demand. Someone had to find a way to extract oil from the ground.

Edwin Drake Enters the Oil Business

Edwin Drake had been born in 1819 in New York State, and as a young man had worked at various jobs before finding employment in 1850 as a railroad conductor. After about seven years of working on the railroad he retired due to ill health.

A chance encounter with two men who happened to be the founders of a new company, The Seneca Oil Company, led to a new career for Drake.

The executives, George H. Bissell and Jonathan G. Eveleth, needed someone to travel back and forth inspecting their operations in rural Pennsylvania, where they collected oil from seeps. And Drake, who was looking for work, seemed like the ideal candidate. Thanks for his former job as a railroad conductor, Drake could ride the trains for free.

The First Oil Well Was Known as "Drake's Folly"

Once Drake began working in the oil business he became motivated to increase production at the oil seeps. The solution seemed to be to dig into the ground to get to the oil, and at first Drake set about digging a mine. But the effort ended in failure as the mine shaft flooded.

Drake reasoned that he could drill for oil, using a technique similar to that used by men who had drilled into the ground for salt. He experimented and discovered iron "drive pipes" could be forced through the shale and down to where oil deposits should be.

The oil well Drake constructed was called "Drake's Folly" by some of the locals, who doubted it could ever be successful. But Drake persisted, with the help of a local blacksmith he had hired, William "Uncle Billy" Smith. At a slow progress, three feet a day, the well kept going deeper, until, on August 27, 1859, it reached a depth of 69 feet.

The next morning, when Uncle Billy arrived to resume work, he discovered that oil had risen through the well. Drake's idea had worked, and soon the "Drake Well" was producing a steady supply of oil.

The First Oil Well Was an Instant Success

Drake's well brought oil up out of the ground and it was funneled into whiskey barrels. Before long Drake had a steady supply of about 400 gallons of pure oil every 24 hours, a stunning amount when compared to the meager output that could be collected from oil seeps.

Other wells were constructed, and because Drake never patented his idea, anyone could use his methods. In fact, Drake himself only drilled two more wells before leaving the oil business and living out most of the rest of his life in poverty.

Within two years there was an oil boom in western Pennsylvania, with wells that produced thousands of barrels of oil a day. The price of oil dropped so low that Drake and his employers were essentially put out of business. But Drake's efforts showed that drilling for oil could be practical.

In recognition of Drake's efforts, the Pennsylvania legislature voted to award Drake a pension in 1870, and he lived in Pennsylvania until his death in 1880.
(http://history1800s.about.com/od/oil/a/first-oil-well.htm).

Edwin Drake did not discover oil. Oil has been used in many places around the world since ancient times. Drake did, however, start the oil rush, a market which today is worth more in futures than it’s actual value. (A barrel of oil is traded some 27 times before it reaches its destination.) None – actual or futures – from which Drake would benefit; he died penniless in 1880. Neither would he be called The father of oil. That title went to Major Frank Holmes, the colorful New Zealander who established the first oil industries of the Middle East.

The ancient history of oil is not well documented but the modern history of oil is fascinating. The Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power by Daniel Yergin describes it well. The New York Times reviewed the book as “Spellbinding… irresistible… monumental… must be read to understand the first thing about the role of oil in modern history.”
(http://didyouknow.tv/history-of-oil/)
Fortunately, there is also an excellent video on the HISTORY OF OIL.

Moral of the Story: DO NOT EVER EVER UNDERESTIMATE YOUR LIMITS!

Member states of OPEC

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was founded in Baghdad, Iraq, with the signing of an agreement in September 1960 by five countries namely Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. They were to become the Founder Members of the Organization.

These countries were later joined by Qatar (1961), Indonesia (1962), Libya (1962), the United Arab Emirates (1967), Algeria (1969), Nigeria (1971), Ecuador (1973), Gabon (1975) and Angola (2007).

From December 1992 until October 2007, Ecuador suspended its membership. Gabon terminated its membership in 1995. Indonesia suspended its membership effective January 2009.

Currently, the Organization has a total of 12 Member Countries.

The OPEC Statute distinguishes between the Founder Members and Full Members - those countries whose applications for membership have been accepted by the Conference.

The Statute stipulates that “any country with a substantial net export of crude petroleum, which has fundamentally similar interests to those of Member Countries, may become a Full Member of the Organization, if accepted by a majority of three-fourths of Full Members, including the concurring votes of all Founder Members.”

The Statute further provides for Associate Members which are those countries that do not qualify for full membership, but are nevertheless admitted under such special conditions as may be prescribed by the Conference.

Source: http://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/about_us/25.htm

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Hello guys, I'm a Gas Engineering student currently in my final year, Pls I'm looking for a good Project topic that I can excel. Pls those of us tht have gone through this should assist me...both on topics and material should keep it coming. Reasonable topic in oil nd gas sector, I'll appreciate. Thank you.

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was waiting for this am glad am here......

kingsmecca: Hello guys, I'm a Gas Engineering student currently in my final year, Pls I'm looking for a good Project topic that I can excel. Pls those of us tht have gone through this should assist me...both on topics and material should keep it coming. Reasonable topic in oil nd gas sector, I'll appreciate. Thank you.

Please, be more explicit. Check the emboldened word.
Would a topic like "Evaluation and prediction of performance for gas wells" interests you?

Great initiative on the part of @piperalpha

yinkeys: Great initiative on the part of @piperalpha

Many thanks brother

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Nice article on Edwin Drake