The history of the development of the modern petroleum industry is a history of scientific invention and technological innovation. The over-100-year history of the petroleum industry fully proves that science and technology are the keys to the success of the petroleum industry.
The progress of science and technology deepens people’s understanding of the petroleum resources in the world. Although the total amount of oil and gas in the world is a constant, people’s cognition of the petroleum resources has a developing process. The idea of “oil depletion” once prevailed during the first oil crisis in the 1970s. More than 30 years have passed by, and the proven oil reserves in the world turn out to be increasing after many turns of assessment. The assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey for the world oil and gas resources in the year of 2000 revealed that the conventional recoverable oil resources reached 411.2 billion tons, 32% higher than the figure in the 1994 assessment. Although in the past 20 years the production of oil has accumulated to 70 billion tons, the proven remaining reserves of oil in the world increased from 88 billion tons in 1980 to 156.7 billion tons in 2003.
The progress of science and technology is increasing people’s capacity of obtaining more oil. In the past century, the output of oil in the world has gone through three spanning times of increase. The first time was in the 1920s and 1930s. Due to the popularity of the seismic waves reflection method, internal-combustion engine rig, bit cone and so on, the output of oil in the world increased from 100 million tons to 200 millions tons. The second time was in the 1960s and 1970s. Benefiting from new theories and technology on plate tectonics, water flood recovery, jet drilling and so on, the output of oil in the world increased from 1 billion tons to 2 billion tons. The third time is that the output of oil in the world maintains around 3 billion tons since 1990s thanks to the techniques concerning basin modeling, horizontal drilling, three-D seismic exploration and tertiary recovery. All these show that the spanning increase of oil output each time obviously is the result of the breakthroughs of important theories and technology in petroleum.
The value of the technological development in oil lies in using the least investment to get the most reserves of oil and gas. The emergence and extensive use of techniques as the three-D seismic exploration and directed drilling increased the rate of success in drilling oil and gas from 50% at the beginning of the 1990s to 70% at present. The oil equivalent from a single-well has increased from 2 million bbl to over 7 million bbl. The technological breakthroughs of exploration and development greatly reduced the cost of exploration and development of oil. In the 1990s, the cost of exploration and development of big international oil companies have decreased by 33%. The progress of science and technology has tremendously enhanced people’s capacity to use resources of oil and gas economically. Boosted by the advancement of technology, the petroleum industry chains are constantly developing in breadth and depth, the application of petrochemicals is extending, and the oil reserves are used more thoroughly and effectively. The variety of oil products grows from one (i.e. kerosene) to thousands. With the development and combination of high and new techniques in the petrochemical industry, petrochemical products and their derivatives are widely used in every aspect of people’s life.
In the past 50 years, oil science and technology in China developed theories and engineering technology fit for China. These theories and technology have greatly supported the development of the Chinese oil industry. Guided by the theories of non-marine facies oil geology founded and developed in China, China has discovered oil and gas fields of large scales, and thus proved that China is not barren in oil. The latest resources evaluation revealed that China’s geological resources of oil have amounted to 104.1 billion tons, and recoverable resources have amounted to about 15 billion tons. The theory developed by large-scale heterogeneous sandstone oil fields and the application of such techniques as separate-zone production and tertiary recovery enables Daqing Oil Field to keep an annual output of 50 million tons for 27 years and creates a miracle in the world. Those advanced techniques make it possible that the block faulted oil deposit smaller than 1 km2 can be effectively explored. These significant achievements of science and technology have effectively guided the exploration and development of large-scale oil and gas fields in China.
The history of the past century shows that progress in science and technology in oil have created miracles and have greatly changed the world oil industry. In the future, the progress of science and technology and the breakthrough of key technology will still be the fundamental forces for the constant development of the oil industry.
The 21st century is the century for science and technology in oil to face challenges from worsening resources. With the development of oil exploration, the development areas will gradually switch to deep layers, deep seas, deserts, high mountains and barren high-latitude lands that are located in hostile geological environments. New destinations of deep exploration and development have reached the layers as deep as 6000-7000m and the sea areas as deep as above 3000m. The scale of oil fields is declining gradually; the quality of reserves is worsening; the percentage of the unrecoverable is increasing; 75% of the new reserves come from the complex or subtle reservoir of old oil fields. All these make it increasingly difficult in technology to discover and exploit residual oil-gas reserves. With the worsening of crude oil, to enhance the comprehensive utilization rate of oil resources in downstream businesses of the oil industry has become the main direction for the development of the world oil refining technology. And new techniques like deep processing of heavy oil and the upgrading of residuum have become heat topics in the oil refining industry. Facing the 21st century, developing low grade oil gas resources and refining low quality resources at low cost will be important topics in science and technology of oil.
The 21st century is the century for tremendous development of green science and technology of oil. To reduce environmental pollution and to realize sustainable development become the common urgent tasks for the oil industry. The world oil industry should speed up the development of green production technology, reduce or even eliminate pollution, produce clean fuel and “green” petrochemical products at low cost and bring under control the emission of pollutants. It has become the common goal for the world oil industry to actively prevent rather than passively treat pollution. Boosted by technological innovation, the world oil industry will no longer cause any pollution and will grow into an industry producing green products in a green producing process with green raw material.
The 21st century is a century in which new technology will fast penetrate the oil industry. The new technological revolution, led mainly by bioscience, information science and material science, will have significant impact on the oil industry and will provide new opportunities for development. The oil industry chains will expand further and gradually fuse with other prospering industries. The oil industry will depend on a variety of resources rather than oil resources only.
The 21st century is the century in which the development of alternative energy resources will speed up. After all, oil and natural gas are not recyclable and will be used up one day in the future. However, the development of human society will not stop. In order to make progress, in just a few hundred years, people exhausted the oil and gas resources that need 100 million years to form. Thus the issue of sustainable development of energy should be settled in the 21st century. To guarantee the sustainable development of the economy, the whole world is actively exploring recyclable energy resources like solar energy, wind energy, geothermal energy and waterpower, as well as alternative energy resources such as gas hydrates and hydrogen energy. Under these circumstances, scientific research of oil will expand into the scope of energy.
Laden with heavy responsibilities, in the 21st century, oil science and technology is obviously developing towards intellectualization, integration, purification and humanization.
Information technology will penetrate into and be fused with oil technology. The exploration and development of oil, the scale of intelligent control and decision in processing technology will be enhanced. In the process that traditional technology changes for information technology, such leading technology of the oil industry as the mechanism that experts make decisions, reservoir neuron network simulation, intelligent wells, digital oil fields and advanced oil refining technology will develop very fast and will lead to a great leap in reservoir management and in the utilization of oil and gas reserves.
The development direction of science and technology in petroleum will be integration of disciplines, data, techniques, methods, equipment and departments. Key techniques concerning integration of seismic acquisition, seismic processing and interpretation, catalytic cracking, resource evaluation, exploration and development will be improved and perfected. This will lead to a gigantic leap of science and technology in petroleum.
Environment-friendly science and technology will be the direction of the development of science and technology in petroleum. While benefiting human beings, the oil industry also pollutes the environment. To develop green science and technology of oil is the demand of the era and is the base of sustainable development. The techniques of directional wells, big displacement wells and branch wells will substantially reduce operation floor space and pollution. Biotechnology and new oil reserve cleaning injectants will prevent underground oil reserves from pollution to the utmost. The techniques of biocatalysis and desulfurization will leave room for the development of the oil refining industry in an environment-friendly way.
The human-oriented idea will direct the future development of science and technology in petroleum and will draw more attention to the issue of safety. HSE will be included not only in oil production process, but also in research, development, popularization and utilization of petroleum. Those control and management techniques involving safe operation, environment protection, pollution-restoration, accident prevention and disaster recovery will become indispensable in the oil industry in the future. The idea that techniques guarantee safety and safety creates profits will be an important concept in the oil industry in the future.
The development of science and technology in petroleum in the 21st century requires new ideas, new theories and new methods, especially excellent young scientists who are willing to make great efforts for the development of the oil industry. The development of the oil industry in the 20th century depended on the constant progress of oil science and technology and also on the continuous struggle of scientists for several generations. Challenges in the oil industry in the 21st century far outnumber that of the last century, and the development of science and technology in petroleum needs a larger number of excellent scientists and engineering experts in petroleum. Scientific research and technological innovation are exploratory and creative activities in the process of understanding and changing the world. In this process, original thoughts are especially important. Throughout the history, most scientists made their achievements when they were young. Since youth is the most active period for thoughts and creativity, young people will be the main forces for the advancement of science and technology in petroleum in the 21st century.
(Translated by Lu Ye)