Petroleum and Natural Gas — Exploration, Production, Handling, Storage

Abstract

In the year 2000, petroleum and natural gas together will cover between 50% and 70% of the global energy requirement, and the energy-coverage ratio between the two will be about 2: 1 to 1.5 in favor of petroleum. Obviously, in view of the corresponding scale of petroleum and natural-gas production, countries with major resources and corresponding development projects in the mining sector will have continued exposure to consequential environmental impacts. Due to the immobility of deposits and to the technical processes required to obtain the crude product, petroleum and natural-gas mining activities have their own specific environmental consequences. According to prevailing international definitions, a typical petroleum/natural-gas development project comprises the following three phases:

• exploration on- and offshore, mainly by geophysical methods and exploration drilling, including a test phase following any discovery;

• production beginning with field development drilling as a precondition for actual production, in the course of which certain phases are run through, up to and including basic conditioning of the raw material. The production of crude oil and natural gas requires a certain infrastructure;

• handling and storage directly following the production stage, i.e., prior to the further processing of crude oil and natural gas into energy-market products. These activities utilize part of the overall infrastructure.