Introduction to Oil Exploration & Production

Prepared by
Hemant Kumar
Domain Consultant
 Please note

• This document is first in the series of three

documents explaining the underlying processes in
upstream (exploration & production) sector

• Next two documents are titled as Oil “exploration-

prospecting.ppt” and Basics of Oil and Gas
Exploration.ppt

• All three documents have been stored on KNet

 Oil In day to day life
The electricity in our house- oil
The food you eat grow with and gas helped to make it
The help of fertilizer made
from oil and natural gas

The gasoline in our car

The asphalt pavement on
is made form oil
Road is made from oil
 Introduction

How oil is formed?

• Oil was formed underground

• From the remains of prehistoric

plant & animals.

 INTRODUCTION

Everywhere you go, you are sitting on top

of rock. In some cases you can be on top
of about 20 miles of rock.
Now how much is 20 miles?

Mt. Everest, the world’s highest mountain,

Is a mass of rock about 6 miles high.

So rock 20 miles deep would reach over

three times as far. That’s a lot of rock, and
that’s what you might be sitting on
INTRODUCTION
 Most rock containing oil begins as Through the years, wind and water rolled these
tiny grains of sand, silt or clay, like small grains around. Eventually they settle in
the soil in your yard. low spots, often under water.
Sand, silt and clay grains sink in the water
covering up dead plants and animal life.
Plants and animals Water is trapped between the grains as well
live in the water as
well. Most are too
small to be seen
without a
microscope. Many
are diatoms which
are tiny, one celled
plant
Soon the grains themselves
Are covered by more dead
plant and animal life.
The process is repeated over and
over as layers of mud, sand and wat
build up for thousands of feet.

When things get piled up,
Sometimes the things on the
bottom get squashed by the
weight of the things on the top.
This is what happens to the layers of sand, mud and water and dead
plant and animal life. As they are covered up on sea bottoms, the
pressure on them become greater and greater.
As they are the buried deeper and deeper, they also get hotter. Finally
after millions of years and the right amounts of heat and pressure,
the mud and sand grains harden into rock. The rock looks like
brown or gray cement.
As the dead plant and animal life decay, oil and gas are formed. Most
oil and gas come from decayed microscopic plants and animals.
Exactly how oil and gas form isn’t known. Heat, pressure and bacteria
are all important.
 INTRODUCTION

All of this happened in shallow seas,

which covered much of the state that is
now above water. Most oil and gas fields
are found where these seas once were.
 INTRODUCTION

Note the stripes in rock shown. They are nothing

but the different Layers neatly piled up.
• Continued in the “Oil exploratin-prospecting.ppt”
on Knet
 Reference

http://www.spe.org/spe/jsp/basic

http://science.howstuffworks.com/oil-drilling4.htm

http://www.leeric.lsu.edu/bgbb/3/origin.html

http://www.adventuresinenergy.org

http://www.mssu.edu/seg-
vm/introduction_to_geophysical_prospecting.html