文档介绍：1 - World Oil
This book always has been and will continue to be a
short, comprehensive overview of oil operations, excluding
refining and marketing. It is not intended to be technical.
It is intended to educate those interested in the basics of
the industry.
This is a fun book to write. I find myself updating the
third edition, which was written in 1975. It is fun to read
the predictions made then pare those predictions
with actual events. Then, too, I get to look into my crystal
ball and forecast what the future holds for all of us. By the
time anyone figures out whether I was right or wrong, I
will either be departed from this world or too old to care.
It was 17 years from the first to the third edition and
now 31 years between the third and sixth editions. A lot
has happened in our business in the last 31 years-more
than I ever dreamed I would see. In 1975, Tenneco was a
big player in the domestic oil business and now few remem-
ber the name. Who would believe that Amoco, Gulf, and
Mobil would disappear? The USSR has fallen along with
the Berlin Wall.
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2 Oil-An Overview of the Petroleum Industry
The energy industry has always had a history of
“booms” and “busts”-chicken one day and feathers the
next. As a small boy, I always enjoyed roaming the fields
of central Oklahoma and hearing stories from my father
and his family about the oil boom towns that sprung up
and disappeared. They were wild and woolly places!
The early 1970s marked the beginning of the biggest
boom/bust cycle in the history of the industry. By 1981,
more than 4500 drilling rigs were running in the United
States. “Busts” always followed “booms” and by the mid
1980s the industry was in the depths of the worst depres-
sion we had ever seen. It was said that the biggest employer
of geologists in Houston was Yellow Cab. It was estimated
that over a half million jobs had been lost. In the 31 years
since the 1975 addition,