Oil is one of the most important fossil fuels in this day and age, as it is used for fuel, and without fuel you couldn’t even transport coal. It is widely distributed, to countries everywhere. The 5 main crude oil producing countries are Saudi Arabia, Russia, United States, Iran and China. However, this is not just ‘oil’ this is crude oil, which is a smelly, yellow-to-black liquid and is usually found in underground areas called reservoirs. Scientists and engineers explore a chosen area by studying rock samples from the earth. Measurements are taken, and, if the site seems promising, drilling begins. Above the hole, a structure called a 'derrick' is built to house the tools and pipes going into the well. When finished, the drilled well will bring a steady flow of oil to the surface. Although crude oil is smelly and looks funny, this isn’t how it stays. It is converted into many different products, including; heavy fuel oil; jet fuel; diesel fuel & heating oil; gasoline and other things. The majority of crude oil is converted into, petrol or gasoline and transported in flame proof barrels to petrol stations and gas stations all over the world. If you think how many petrol stations there are in the world, and how many times people refuel their vehicles in a day, that’ll be a lot of oil used in the process. So in this sense it is being overused, but then again we don’t know how much oil is left in the world, so it might not be being worn-out but rather being used to its requirements. One barrel of crude oil, when refined, produces about 20 gallons of finished motor gasoline, and 7 gallons of diesel, as well as other petroleum products. Most of the petroleum products are used to produce energy. For instance, many people across the United States use propane to heat their homes and fuel their cars. 4Other products made from petroleum include: ink, crayons, bubble gum, dishwashing liquids, and deodorant, eyeglasses, records, tires, ammonia, and heart valves. Fuel from oil (the petroleum products) helps us to do many things. These include, fuelling aeroplanes, cars and trucks, to heat our homes and to make products like medicines and plastics. Even though petroleum products make life easier - finding, producing, moving, and using them can cause problems for our environment like air and water pollution. Here, I don’t think it is being overused or even used to its maximum, but this last statement that I wrote about oil can surely tell you that it may be harmful to the environment.
Oil & the Environment
Now, on to oil and the environment, this could be a big matter. First of all oil is used a lot in everyday life, as it is used for fuel, and as I have already said, all vehicles use fuel, apart from hybrids*. Hybrids, are vehicles that do not run off fuel, instead they get there energy from a high powered battery, located where the engine would usually be. These types of vehicles are extremely kind to the environment, as they produce less than half the amount of carbon dioxide produced by a fuel powered car. Lexus have about to released a new car that runs entirely from a battery powered engine and also produces zero amount of carbon dioxide. Although this may be fantastic, there is more to it, its engine produces zero carbon dioxide and there is also something in the engine that makes the car produce only H2O out of the exhaust pipe. Car’s like this would really help the economy on the whole, especially if it eventually became the law to drive a hybrid, and the world was rid of fuel powered cars, anyway back to oil.
As I was saying, I am going to use evidence and opinions to see whether using crude oil is harmful to the environment.
First of all, it is not necessarily oil that causes the pollution; it is more the emissions created by the used products derived from oil. For instance crude oil doesn’t really give off environmentally harmful emissions, but car emissions do, and we all know that most cars run off petrol or gasoline, and these are both products created from oil. I think you get the picture. Although I have just said that it is not usually crude oil itself that is harmful to the environment, I am now going to contradict myself and say that it may be harmful to the environment in the sense that there could be an oil spill. When we talk about oil spills, we usually think of a spillage by a factory or a huge vessel at sea, but most of the spillages of oil come from natural seeps, here take a look at this.
Its tells us that oil spills are usually natural and cannot be helped, so I am going to go with the facts and in my honest opinion, it does weigh up to being almost harmless to the environment. If you take a look back at what we have found out, we know that oil itself doesn’t cause any pollution its just the products of it that do, we also know that most of the oil seeps are of a natural cause, and that crude oil, although it is smelly and looks funny, doesn’t harm the environment in any way.
Oil Conclusion
Now for the conclusion on oil and whether it is being overused, here it is. There weren’t many facts that could tell us whether it was being overused, however from the small amount of facts that we did retrieve, we can assume that it is being overused. But this cannot be confirmed as, as I said before, we do not know how much oil there is left in the world, there could be quite a lot, then again there may not be a lot at all! Once we know how much oil there is left in the oceans, then we may be able to work out whether it is being overused, or whether it is just being used as much as it should be, but at the moment, I think it may possibly be being used a little too much. The only reason I am saying this is because lately on the news you hear that the prices of petrol are on the rise once again, meaning that it must be being used too much or else why would they raise the price per litre. You have to remember that price rations out scarcity, so if you raise the price, there may be people that are put off by the high price, however, petrol is a necessity if you have car, so instead of not re-fuelling, drivers may, instead, drive more economically and conserve their fuel.
Natural Gas
Now it is time to discuss the final type of fossil fuel, which is NATURAL GAS. Natural gas is discovered or collected in the same way as oil, as they are both stored as deposits deep, deep underneath the waters. 4Millions of years ago, the remains of plants and animals decayed and built up in thick layers. This decayed matter from plants and animals is called organic material -- it was once alive. Over time, the mud and soil changed to rock, covered the organic material and trapped it beneath the rock. Pressure and heat changed some of this organic material into coal, some into oil (petroleum), and some into natural gas -- tiny bubbles of odourless gas. The main ingredient in natural gas is methane, a gas (or compound) composed of one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms. First of all I think we should look at how natural gas is used here on Earth. The main use of natural gas is for gas central heating for homes across the world. Some of the other uses of natural gas are for producing steel, glass, paper, clothing, brick, electricity and much more. It is also an essential raw material for many common products such as paints, fertilisers, plastics, antifreeze, dyes, photographic film, medicines and explosives. You also get propane from natural gas, which many people have to fuel their back-garden barbeques. Industry depends on natural gas as it is one of those essential ingredients to make something work. An industry without natural gas is like a car without petrol, it just won’t work.
Natural gas is stored and delivered via pipelines starting at the producing fields and ending at the place where consumers need it. You can also cool the natural gas down to -260(F) and transform it into a liquid state. Once in this state, it can be moved around in on tankers, ships with several large domed tanks, and transported to different countries. Once it is in the country, it can be warmed to its gaseous state again and stored near its consumer market or fuelled back into pipelines. 4When the gas gets to the communities where it will be used (usually through large pipelines), the gas is measured as it flows into smaller pipelines called "MAINS". Very small lines, called "SERVICES", connect to the mains and go directly to homes or buildings where it will be used. Now as it looks here, natural gas isn’t really being overused, however, around winter times it gets used way too much as it is constantly being used to heat homes, workplaces and industries. Although they may need heating all year round, they don’t need anywhere near as much as they do when the weather is cold.
Natural Gas & the Environment
Now we move on to the final section of the natural gas analysis, natural gas and the environment. Well first of all, natural gas burns much more clearly than the other fossil fuels, so I guess that is a major plus. 4It has fewer emissions of sulphur, carbon, and nitrogen than coal or oil, and it has almost no ash particles left after burning. Being one of the cleaner burning fuels, it is no surprise that the use of natural gas, especially for electricity generation, has grown so much and is expected to grow much more in the future. Although it burns more clearly than the other fossil fuels, it doesn’t make it completely harmless. When natural gas is produced, transported or stored it leaks a gas called methane, which is harmful to the environment as it is a greenhouse gas*. This leaks from storage wells or tanks, although it is trying to be prevented from happening in the future, as greenhouse gases cause damage to the ozone layer*. When the people who drill for oil actually do the drilling, they disturb much of the habitat around the area and disturb wildlife and land. New technology has tried to reduce the amount of disturbance around the area, sometimes called ‘footprints’. 4Satellites, global positioning systems, remote sensing devices, and 3-D and 4-D seismic technologies, make it possible to discover natural gas reserves while drilling fewer wells. When natural gas leaks it is odourless, so you cannot tell whether it is leaking or not, this is why natural gas companies add a smelly substance to it so that people will know if there is a leak. If you have a natural gas stove, you may have smelled this ‘rotten egg’ smell of natural gas when the pilot light has gone out.
Natural Gas Conclusion
Now it is time for the conclusion on natural gas, the final fossil fuel! If you take a look back over what we have found out and what I have written down, you will learn that natural gas isn’t really being overused, as, once again, we don’t know how much is left. But there can’t be and everlasting supply of it, so I suppose it could be used less. We know that it is used for heating homes, industry uses it a whole lot, and is used in gas canisters for barbeques. It is used and awful lot over winter and cold times to heat homes and almost all homes have gas central heating nowadays, if you think how many homes there are worldwide, and how many of them have gas central heating, wooo, that must be a lot of natural gas that is needed. At the moment I don’t think it is being overused, but if we keep on using it at this rate and building new homes with GCH as standard then we are going to be running out fairly soon, within the next 100 years possibly.
Conclusion
Now, we have come to the end of this case study and it is time for the overall conclusion on all the fossil fuels and whether they are being overused collectively.
First, I will take a look at the evidence I have collected and see what I can come up with.
Here are the facts on coal and the ways in which it is being used;
COAL
- It is used to create electric power for many things in the world.
- Provides around 33% of our energy needs.
- Around 2,000,000 tonnes of coal gets used every year.
OIL
- Used for fuelling vehicles all over the world.
- Crude oil is refined to create many different products including; plastics and medicines
NATURAL GAS
- Used for GCH in homes across the globe.
- Used as a raw material to produce goods such as paints, plastics and antifreeze.
- You also get propane from natural gas which many people use to fuel their back garden barbeques.
Now it is time to find out or make a conclusion as to whether fossil fuels are being overused or used to their full potential.
First of all, as it says above, around 2,000,000 tonnes of coal are used per year, to give us the energy that we need to do everyday things. This is an awful lot of coal and I am sure that there can’t be enough to keep using it at this rate for too long. There can only be X amount of coal and the people at the power plant are using this much a year, plus you have to mine it first as well. I think to slow down the rate at which coal is just seemingly disappearing, everyone needs to stop using so electricity, or else we will all suffer in the future. So I definitely think that coal is being overused, as there just simply isn’t enough to keep up with our needs. Although I have come to this conclusion with only this small set of results, I think that if I had the correct resources then I could definitely come up with a better case study, as I am slightly limited with the information that I can collect. Once we have sorted out the problem with coal, then you have the problem with natural gas and also oil. I think, by looking over the information that I have collected, that natural gas is the type of fossil fuel that is being least used, as it is only used for heating homes mainly, whereas coal is used to burn and create electricity, and oil is used for many different products and to fuel vehicles, once it has been refined. However, there are quite a lot of houses in the world and if the majority of them have GCH then natural gas could still be in short supply. If I could find out how much natural gas there is left in the world then I would be able to find out the rate at which it is being used, but I don’t think there will be many people in the world that know how much natural gas is left. For the moment I think we are ok with what we have in natural gas, as there hasn’t been anything on the news relating to a gas problem. On the contrary, there have been articles in the news regarding petrol prices on the rise, and you should now by now that petrol derives from crude oil, which is one of the fossil fuels that I am talking about. This could suggest that there may be a shortage of oil, or they may be getting to a point where they need to slow down on using it. I think that oil is being overused quite significantly as petrol will probably take a lot of the percentage of oil and then they have to make other products with it, where is all this oil coming from, there surely can’t be that much left!
To wrap up my conclusion, I am going to say that, YES, the fossil fuels are being overused, and as the word, fossil, says they can’t just be reformed, they are fossils of dead plants and animals from millions of years ago, so if you were even going to begin thinking of when they may be back, you can forget your grandchildren’s era, or their grandchildren, or their grandchildren, or theirs. I don’t think they will ever be back, that is why they are non-renewable and will never be back! That is why I think we should slow down on their usage, especially if you want them to be here throughout your lifetime, because if we carry on using them at this rate, they could be gone in the next 50 years!
Bibliography
1 BBC News stories
I used this site for most of my information on the coal section of my case study. I think the info I got from here was quite extensive, and went into detail about what we use it for and how harmful it is to the environment. This site helped me come to my conclusion on coal.
2 Wikipedia
I obtained this information on acid rain from the Wikipedia site, which has extensive knowledge on any subject you search for. I think you will struggle to find a definition that isn’t on this huge internet encyclopaedia.
3 Energy Resources
This website had little about what I needed but had the best about what was important, the definitions of scientific grammar. I just typed in what I needed and found this website and it was quite good.
4 Energy Kids Page
This website was brilliant, and had loads of information, I loved it! It sorted the fossil fuels out into different sections and then sorted the information about the fossil fuel into sections, and was very neatly presented.
Contents
Coal Page 1
Coal Conclusion Page 2
Oil Page 2
Oil & the Environment Page 3
Oil Conclusion Page 4
Natural Gas Page 5
Natural Gas & the Environment Page 6
Natural Gas Conclusion Page 7
Conclusion Page 7
Bibliography Page 9