Safehold Oil and Gas Industry

First I would like to thank David Weber for releasing his next Safehold book October 4, 2016. My birthday is the 5th so this year I won't have to drink a "5th" or take the"5th" I'll spend a wonderful birthday with Mr Weber's latest book!

I'm a third generation oil and gas producer from the county and state where crude oil was first discovered in North America. Native Americans took French missionaries to an "oil spring" in what is now Cuba, New York. The Native Americans were using the oil for medicine. In the local oil and gas industry salt water is called brine and when both oil and brine are pumped into a tank the oil "floats" to the top and the brine settles to the bottom. Locally the crude oil is in the pore space in sandstone. That's where the term porosity comes in. The larger the pore space (or porosity) the more oil that's in that zone. Because these untapped zones also have natural gas mixed with the crude oil they are pressurized. If the zone is close enough to the surface when drilled into natural gas may push crude oil to the surface. On Safehold, an earthquake could release the mix of natural gas and crude oil allowing it to come to the surface.

I will turn 60 in October and it will be 54 years since I went to my first frac job in N.Y. Yep, I was 6 and it was one of the first oil wells fraced in N.Y. My dad fraced the well with crude oil because they didn't know how the fresh water would effect the oil sands. Before that we "shot" the wells with nitroglycerine.

Sorry this ran so long.

Oh, by the way, the crude oil from New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio is "sweet crude". It is paraffin based so on Safehold the paraffin would be a great byproduct. I believe the first use of natural gas for lighting was in Dunkirk, N.Y. In some places on the Lake Erie shore you can see natural gas bobbling up through the water.

Weird Harold wrote:Safehold also has fire-vine oil and a couple of other sources of bio-oils to compete with coal-slurry/powdered coal. Powdered coal may well be a solution for large steam-power installations (convertible to electricity generation in the fullness of time) but oil-fired steam power is going to be the power of choice for mobile applications for quite a while; even after the Proscriptions are lifted.

Especially if you're talking about warships.

You really don't want to be loading and storing pre-powdered coal because it's a serious fire and explosion risk.

So you're stuck with the loading, handling, (and water tight bulkhead) disadvantages of lump coal plus you have to give up mass and volume for just-in-time grinder machinery to create the coal powder to blow into your furnaces.


Much, much, easier to pump; way easier to incorporate the tanks into underwater protection systems, easier to make watertight seals around fuel pipes than coal shuttles, and higher caloric value per ton (so you need less tonnage of it).

Jonathan_S wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:Safehold also has fire-vine oil and a couple of other sources of bio-oils to compete with coal-slurry/powdered coal. Powdered coal may well be a solution for large steam-power installations (convertible to electricity generation in the fullness of time) but oil-fired steam power is going to be the power of choice for mobile applications for quite a while; even after the Proscriptions are lifted.

Especially if you're talking about warships.

You really don't want to be loading and storing pre-powdered coal because it's a serious fire and explosion risk.

So you're stuck with the loading, handling, (and water tight bulkhead) disadvantages of lump coal plus you have to give up mass and volume for just-in-time grinder machinery to create the coal powder to blow into your furnaces.


Much, much, easier to pump; way easier to incorporate the tanks into underwater protection systems, easier to make watertight seals around fuel pipes than coal shuttles, and higher caloric value per ton (so you need less tonnage of it).

Automatic stokers can take most of the risk with coal out but loading an underway coal fired steamer is a major issue. Fleet tankers exist for a reason, fleet coaling is a job for a sheltered anchorage. Oil isn't pleasant in fire fight either (particularly gasoline - ask any WWII aircraft carrier crewman) but can easily be loaded by flexible hoses underway, pumping coal has only really been perfected in the last 30 years due to the abrasive nature of the material (yes, you can pump coal (as a slurry)). Diesel engines are however more compact than steam engines which permits smaller ships to carry the same arms. A manually stoked battleship will have over 100 men on duty in the boiler room at any one time (12 boilers, 6 stokers to each boiler plus supervision and boiler drivers) with four shifts (400 stokers total (or quarter the ships crew)), a diesel engined ship of the same size may have 10 total (and modern container ships have a total crew of 20 to 30).

So I've been rereading MT&T for a couple of days now and have gotten about a third of the way through, to where we have the discussion about the nascent oil and gas industry...

That brought my mind back to this thread and the various (and great) comments on the thread.

But I found one thing missing from the discussion we have going here - Use of LUBRICANTS!

Seems that we've beaten the horse to death talking about oil, coal, and gas as FUELS, but very little time thinking about the need for lubricants.

All the new machinery, whether steam engines, small machinery, manufacturing equipment, firearms, recoil accumulators, etc, etc, all require lubricants - some liquid, some in semi-solid form.

To date, the number of "machines" has been relatively small. But Charis' expansion into what is effectively a "mechanical revolution" will drive a commensurate increase in the volume of lubricants required. And I don't think traditional forms of lubricants (or their traditional sources) will be adequate to the task.

Zhansyn Wyllys appears to have at least a rudimentary background in fuels and a basic understanding of distillation concepts. As a member of the College, I could see him eventually leading a renaissance in the field of organic chemistry and "everything hydrocarbons." He certainly seems to have the interest and motivation! While his main (initial) interest may be in seeking replacements for Sea Dragon oil, I think the unintended consequences of his work - especially if he is indoctrinated into the Circle - could result in a significant leap forward.

As stated earlier in this thread, the "oil fields in South Charis and Emerald," combined with his understanding of refining and production, form a great foundation for many "spin-offs."

Improved lubrication made the bigger locomotives possible. Remember that petroleum-based lubricants didn't exist before Colonel Edwin Drake opened his oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859. Prior to that, lubricants were mostly made of animal tallow.

Petroleum-based lubricants that could withstand high temperatures made possible the superheater, a major improvement in boilers in 1910. Water in a 200-psi boiler boils atabout 387 degrees Fahrenheit. This is saturated, or "wet," steam. The superheater takes this wet steam and pipes it back through the firetubes to dry it out and drive itstemperature dramatically upward to about 700 degrees. Since it is heat and not pressure that actually does the work in a steam engine, this boosts the efficiency of the boiler by about 30 percent by making further use of the fire that is already there. Because of lubrication problems, the hot, dry super-heated steam cannot be used in the older slide valves on the cylinders but requires piston spool valves and lubricants that can handle the higher temperatures.

And we saw a superheated 2-4-0 loco (Automotive) in HFQ... so IMHO mineral lubricants are already invented.

Assuming that it parallels whale oil, one of the primary uses for dragon oil is lubrication.

WeberFan wrote:So I've been rereading MT&T for a couple of days now and have gotten about a third of the way through, to where we have the discussion about the nascent oil and gas industry...

That brought my mind back to this thread and the various (and great) comments on the thread.

But I found one thing missing from the discussion we have going here - Use of LUBRICANTS!

Seems that we've beaten the horse to death talking about oil, coal, and gas as FUELS, but very little time thinking about the need for lubricants.

All the new machinery, whether steam engines, small machinery, manufacturing equipment, firearms, recoil accumulators, etc, etc, all require lubricants - some liquid, some in semi-solid form.

To date, the number of "machines" has been relatively small. But Charis' expansion into what is effectively a "mechanical revolution" will drive a commensurate increase in the volume of lubricants required. And I don't think traditional forms of lubricants (or their traditional sources) will be adequate to the task.

Zhansyn Wyllys appears to have at least a rudimentary background in fuels and a basic understanding of distillation concepts. As a member of the College, I could see him eventually leading a renaissance in the field of organic chemistry and "everything hydrocarbons." He certainly seems to have the interest and motivation! While his main (initial) interest may be in seeking replacements for Sea Dragon oil, I think the unintended consequences of his work - especially if he is indoctrinated into the Circle - could result in a significant leap forward.

As stated earlier in this thread, the "oil fields in South Charis and Emerald," combined with his understanding of refining and production, form a great foundation for many "spin-offs."

Louis R wrote:Assuming that it parallels whale oil, one of the primary uses for dragon oil is lubrication.

Safehold does also have "Fire vine" oil and a tree sourced oil that appear to fill much the same role as early petroleum oil products. They've also begun exploring the uses of "coal tar" from their "city-gas" plants.

I don't know that Safehold is, as yet, in dire need of petroleum. It probably won't be long before they do need petroleum for lubricants, plastics, petrochemicals, etc. I just hope they don't make the mistake of burning it as fast as they can drill for it.

Weird Harold wrote:

Louis R wrote:Assuming that it parallels whale oil, one of the primary uses for dragon oil is lubrication.

Safehold does also have "Fire vine" oil and a tree sourced oil that appear to fill much the same role as early petroleum oil products. They've also begun exploring the uses of "coal tar" from their "city-gas" plants.

I don't know that Safehold is, as yet, in dire need of petroleum. It probably won't be long before they do need petroleum for lubricants, plastics, petrochemicals, etc. I just hope they don't make the mistake of burning it as fast as they can drill for it.

In the early days of petroleum production gasoline was dumped because it was considered useless. They only kept kerosene, it wasn't until the automobile came into practical use that gasoline became valuable. Safehold will continue to use coal for the short term, but in the next 3-5 years to as long as 10 years before the ICN switches to oil fired boilers. Remember in the RW the various navies didn't start converting coal-fired ships to oil fired until the 20's and some into early 30's. Also the various navies didn't start purpose building oil fired ships until the early and mid-teens.

saber964 wrote:...Safehold will continue to use coal for the short term, but in the next 3-5 years to as long as 10 years before the ICN switches to oil fired boilers. Remember in the RW the various navies didn't start converting coal-fired ships to oil fired until the 20's and some into early 30's. Also the various navies didn't start purpose building oil fired ships until the early and mid-teens.

My point was that Safehold does have the opportunity to bypass an economy based on burning non-renewable resources. The real world has a million better uses for petroleum than burning it for energy and dozens of alternative energy sources. Safehold can move directly to those alternative energy sources thanks to OWL's historical record of how the Terran Federation dealt with the depletion of fossil fuels.