Safehold Oil and Gas Industry

Until a couple of days ago, I was under the impression that Safehold would only be able to utilize very limited petroleum or natural gas products. The products would be sourced from natural seeps. They could consist of asphalts, crude oil, or natural gas. The asphalts would be used for water sealing. The limited amounts of oil might be used for heat, light or medicinal purposes. They could have been used for warfare in the form of Greek fire. The natural gas might be used for heat or light. Since it would manifest as an eternal flame, it would most likely be avoided as a sign of Shan-wei.

Then I learned that drilling for oil/gas dates back to at least 320 BCE. It was a large industry in Sichuan Provence China. It grew out of drilling for salt brine.

Salt is a very valuable resource before refrigeration. It is most economically recovered from sea water or surface deposit. It can be traded long distances as shown by the trade from the Mediterranean to the civilizations in the Southern Sahel. This dates from the time of Carthage.

Drilling for salt started in Sichuan because it is isolated from the coast by mountainous terrain and river rapids. Brines were originally recovered by open pit mining. As deeper deposits became known, drilling was developed. Before the Common Era drilling was reaching 800 feet.

Oil and gas deposits are best formed in salt/sediment deposits in warm, stagnant, anoxic ocean basins. Thus they are often associated with salt deposits. Thus, the Sichuanese quite early hit oil and gas. The gas was bamboo piped for heat and light. The oil was eventually distilled and used for all the usual purposes. This included the use in warfare in Chinese flamethrowers.

Does Safehold have an oil and gas industry? Certainly it does not have a large one or Charis would be exploiting it. The use of oils from seeps could have been banned by proscription with Pasquel as a likely source. Seep oil is not abundant and if originally banned pressure for its use minimal.

What about oil associated with deeper brines? There could have been no economic pressure to exploit deep brine deposits due to Safehold’s extensive canal system and overall good transportation system. Alternatively, Safehold might be poor in oil and gas deposits. Safehold might never have experienced the warm, stagnant, anoxic oceans needed for good deposits. Earth only experienced one really good period, the Mesozoic, when 70% of all oil deposits were formed.

Laenole
"All that glitters is not gold"

there has been mention of whale oil used in lanterns. in fact isn't one of the soon to be nominated candidates for the inner circle from the royal college's family involved (practically have a monopoly)in hunting and selling said oil.

also the hand-held lighter used to light signal rockets by some naval officers use fire vine oil.

so there is some use of oil, though not the kind you mean

There is some mention of "oil fields" in Emerald, I think. Precisely what that refers to is unclear and I don't have the reference at my fingertips.

Don

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Charis is in the process of changing from black powder to smokeless propellants. I seem to recall that they are using cordite as their smokeless propellant. I don't know what formula they are using but all cordite formulas have 5% - 6% petroleum jelly as a plasticizer. That would require Charis to produce tons of petroleum jelly to make enough cordite for the war effort. In fact it's probably one of the main reasons for the difficulty in getting smokeless propellant production up to speed.

From all that I would surmise that petroleum production is currently somewhat limited but growing rapidly. Given Charis' drive for efficiency, I would also think that they are using the non petroleum jelly portion of production in some fashion. I don't see Charis just dumping the waste as the inner circle would know the damage that causes.

fuOK... So I've been working in this industry for over 20 years... There are four key areas we need to consider:
- Exploration and production - Finding it and getting it out of the ground.
- Refining - Turning raw hydrocarbons into usable fuels.
- Petrochemicals - Turning refined fuels and refining byproducts into high-value intermediates and products.
- Transportation - Getting large amounts of "stuff" where you need them.
Let's take each area in turn - specifically considering the Safeholdian tech base.
Exploration and Production
Finding hydrocarbon reservoirs can be pretty challenging if you don't have electricity. You're constrained to finding obvious sources such as the previously-mentioned oil "seeps" (think La Brea tar pits). You never know where these might be found. For deeper reservoirs, drilling is pretty straightforward and could be accomplished with current Safehold technology if you know where to drill. For low-pressure reservoirs, pumping is also pretty straightforward. Now here's the wildcard - with Owl's capabilities and with Shan Wei's terraforming and geo-mapping activities (remember the naming of Silverlode Island?) finding likely producing reservoirs should be an almost sure-thing. So fundamentally, you can find it and you can get it out of the ground.

Refining
Here's where the true transformation takes place and where you turn raw crude into something useful. Generally, when you get a bucket of crude, you actually get a real hodge-podge of "stuff." That bucket of crude has a mix of hydrocarbon molecules of different molecular weights. There are "light" molecules (C1 up to perhaps C5) that are typically in a gaseous state at normal atmospheric temperatures and pressures. There are "medium" molecules (C6 up to perhaps C10 or C12) that are typically liquids at normal atmospheric conditions and require the least effort to turn into typical fuels. Then there are "heavy" molecules (longer than C12 or so). These might include things like asphalt. In a modern refinery, you can "crack" longer hydrocarbon molecules to make them shorter (turn a C12 into two C6 molecules for example). You can also "reform" shorter hydrocarbon molecules to make them longer (turn two C3 molecules into a C6 molecule for example). Cracking is done primarily either using a catalyst (probably beyond current Safehold technology) or just by adding heat. When the molecule splits, it releases excess hydrogen (which can be very useful for reforming).

With the primer out of the way, let's go back to the bucket of hydrocarbons. In addition to the mix of molecules, you've also got salt water, other gases, and (often) sulfur. One of the most important activities in a refinery is just to pull all these contaminants OUT of the bucket to give you a bucket of pure mixed hydrocarbon molecules to work with. Resulting and dewatering (in todays world) requires lots of electricity, but CAN be accomplished just by putting the bucket of crude into a tank and letting it sit there quietly for a while until the salt water separates from the oil. Takes a while, but it will eventually happen. Then, if you agitate the mix, some (but by no means all) of the other gases that are engrained in the bucket will be forced out of the mix and will rise to the top. Sulfur is the biggie. Both engrained sulfur and hydrogen sulfide gas (H2S - is the "rotten egg" smell). Tough to remove without electricity, and it causes huge problems in any sort of concentrations - mix H2S with water and you eventually end up with sulfuric acid, which causes lots of problems with equipment and piping.

So let's say you've done all you can to remove the contaminants and have a bucket of crude that's as "clean" as you can make it. Final step is the actual refining. Refining is really nothing more than making moonshine writ large... You take your bucket of crude, you heat it up in a vessel, and you allow it to boil. Different molecules will vaporize at different temperatures. The "heavy" stuff will still be liquid while the "lightest" stuff will be a vapor at the same temperature. As the oil boils in the vessel, the lightest molecules will vaporize and flow to the top of the vessel where they can be pulled out and condensed. "Medium" weight stuff might be mixed in with this stuff (hey - it's not a perfect science, the boiling points overlap somewhat, and temperature control ain't perfect), so you might take some of the condensed stuff from the top and put it back in the vessel so it can flow back down (counterflow to the rising vapors) and can help keep the temperature profile where you want it... So this is how you separate the molecules - heavy, medium, and light. You can put multiple vessels (called distillation columns) in series and get some pretty high-quality product cuts.

Ultimately, the separation gives you some pretty good quality products - heavier ones that are useful for road paving et al, medium ones that are our typical fuels (gasoline, "bunker fuel" for ships, and diesel), and light ones (fuel gas that would be extremely useful for Christian industry).

Petrochemicals
Probably too much to go into here, but petrochemicals are where it's at.... Olefins, Polyolefin, all of the "-ene's" etc. These could revolutionize Safeholdian manufacturing, pharmacology, consumer products ... everything...

Transportation
Here's the biggest single issue. It's EASY to make the stuff... But then you've got to move it! And moving large quantities of liquids using anything other than a pipeline it a commercial and logistical nightmare! Especially if you're consuming them in large volumes (as in with internal combustion / diesel engines).

IMHO, Charis would be best served using refined fuels and fuel gas as a fuel for it's industrial infrastructure - in places where you can build storage tanks and fixed pipelines from the refinery to the consumer - and where neither is moving!

I could talk for weeks on these topics, and hope this (very) basic primer helps with the discussion.

Thank you, WeberFan, for a very educational post. That was a nice summary.

Don

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Thanks Weberfan. Questions about getting the saltwater out, I'm assuming the electricity is used to distill the water out. Wouldn't this leave all the chemicals in seawater behind? How long would the oil have to sit? Hours, days?

EdThomas wrote:Thanks Weberfan. Questions about getting the saltwater out, I'm assuming the electricity is used to distill the water out. Wouldn't this leave all the chemicals in seawater behind? How long would the oil have to sit? Hours, days?

I suspect that dewatering in modern refineries uses ganged centrifuges. Modern centrifuges are powered and controlled by electricity, but it would not be very hard to build a large centrifuge powered by a belt from an overhead shaft (with multiple speeds even). Unfortunately at the tech Charis is using this would require a technician watching the spinning pot.

Castenea wrote:

EdThomas wrote:Thanks Weberfan. Questions about getting the saltwater out, I'm assuming the electricity is used to distill the water out. Wouldn't this leave all the chemicals in seawater behind? How long would the oil have to sit? Hours, days?

I suspect that dewatering in modern refineries uses ganged centrifuges. Modern centrifuges are powered and controlled by electricity, but it would not be very hard to build a large centrifuge powered by a belt from an overhead shaft (with multiple speeds even). Unfortunately at the tech Charis is using this would require a technician watching the spinning pot.

Hey guys: See the following link for an engineering description of how the desalting process works. You actually pass the (heated) raw crude mix through a vessel containing a massive electrified screen. That electrical field electrostatically coalesces the water droplets containing the dissolved salts. The salt itself isn't dissolved in the OIL, rather it's dissolved in the entrained water. Then, the water (with the salts) separates from the oil and you can draw it off. the process uses HUGE amounts of electricity - a very high electrical potential to optimize the coalescing rate. Remember, in a large, modern refinery we're talking industrial-scale processing. Perhaps multiple parallel desalter trains, each running 100K barrels (4.2 million gallons) per day. All day. Every day. For years.

http://www.enggcyclopedia.com/2012/06/desalting-crude-oil-refinery/

The salts (much more than just your basic sodium chloride), the sulfur, and all the other contaminants do some pretty nasty things to various metals, especially at the high temperatures and pressures throughout a refinery...

Did some work in a country that must remain nameless about 20 years ago... They had a reservoir that was producing staggering amounts of crude oil. Problem was that it was out in the middle of east Jesus and the only way they could make money was by pumping the stuff through a really, really long pipeline... Made out of common carbon steel. The crude was very high in sulfur and H2S - what they call "sour crude." With the water in the crude they got a LOT of sulfuric acid... You can only imagine what that high concentration (relatively anyhow) did to the carbon steel pipeline! Can you say "swiss cheese?" They ended up having to build an entire facility close to the reservoir just to pull out the sulfur and water before they could put the crude in the pipeline. Problem with all that H2S is that in any kind of concentration at all, it will kill you dead. Very, very quickly...

Cheers!

I had forgotten the reference to South Charis and Emerald Island having extensive oilfields. It is in MTaT Chapter VII, April Year of God 896. Thanks, Don.

But the paragraph it is in seems to imply that kerosene is not being made presently. It says that Zhansyn Wyllys, the distillation enthusiast from the dragon oil family, could develop extracting kerosene from coal tar. It goes on to say that this plus Safehold’s current drilling and pumping tech along with the oilfields “was likely to lead to a completely new industry”. This seems to indicate to me that the oilfields are known only in Shan-wei’s database in Owl’s library.

While development of the petroleum industry is in Safehold’s long term interest, it is a tough call as to whether distillation should be applied to the production of Poudre B or Cordite. The original Poudre B formula was 68.2% insoluble guncotton, 29.8% soluble nitrocellulose gelatinized with ether, and 2% paraffin. It was almost immediately replaced by a more stable version that added amyl alcohol as a stabilizer. Later, the amyl alcohol was replaces by aniline.

The current Cordite is a triple-base explosive (contains 3 explosive chemicals) that needs a raw material produced through the use of an electric arc furnace. The earliest version is a double-base mixture of 58% nitroglycerin, 37% guncotton, and 5% petroleum jelly. Acetone is then used as a solvent to produced cords of the product (hence its name) of the desired size.

Currently, Charis is producing guncotton and nitroglycerin. The ether can be produced by the reaction of ethanol and sulfuric acid. The amyl alcohol stabilizer for Poudre B can be obtained from the high boiling residue of the ethanol distillation. Acetone can be obtained by the reaction of eggshells or limestone (Calcium carbonate) with vinegar.

The petroleum jelly is obtained by the vacuum distillation of the waxy deposits from drilling or refining. The best stabilizer for Poudre B, aniline, can be obtained by distilling coal tar for its benzene, reacting it with nitric acid, then reducing it with an inorganic sulfide.

Since all components of Poudre B, including the first stabilizer, amyl alcohol, are available now, it is a good initial target. The cordite would have to wait for the actual development of the petroleum industry. Since coal tar seems to be the initial target of distillation projects, obtaining benzene to make the better aniline stabilizer for Poudre B seems a logical part of the project. This would also stimulate the future development of the chemical industry by the eventual production of aniline dyes.

Longer term, the kerosene from coal tar and eventually coal would develop a market for a major component of crude oil. Of course, the gasoline, diesel, and bunker oil will be valuable for different internal combustion machines. It seems to me that producing Poudre B will be quicker and more likely to be used in this war.