We had concluded on 3 key points regarding this question after listening to the description from the staff at the SLB’s booth, which were “upstream”, “formulation”, and “processing”.

1.       Upstream:

The upstream segment of O&G industry includes exploration and production of oil and natural gas. Exploration indicates the search for potential sites to exploit oil and natural gas while production of oil and gas can be further divided into onshore or offshore drilling. Another professional term introduced to us that are deemed to be the new technology in oil and gas industry is “hydraulic fracturing” or “fracking”. It is an oil or natural gas extracting technique from the wells. This technology has successfully increase the recovery rate of oil and gas through the ability of harvesting from the previously inaccessible section in the wells. But how actually does organic chemistry matters in all these upstream processes mentioned herein?  Based on our understanding, the oil or natural gas drilling technologies or facilities such as rig from the located wells by different company might share some common properties but are still distinguished from one another depending on the types of oil or gas pumped. And since oil and gas or petroleum as a whole are basically constituted of hydrocarbons, the analysis, identification and classification of these fossil fuels often requires the knowledge of organic chemistry. For example, the “sweet” crude oil are those will lesser sulfur content while “sour” crude oil has comparably higher sulfur content.   

 

2.       Formulation:

Formulation on the other hand might be related to the research and development of the best formula for producing high quality fuels (liquified petroleum gas, petrol, diesel, gasoline, kerosene, jet fuel) or materials/ingredients for the manufacturing other downstream petrochemical products (plastics, fertilizers, bitumen, paints and flooring and insulating materials). For example, the quality of a fuel is define by its octane rating which gauges the ability of combustion of the fuel in the vehicle engine without knocking or pinging that might damage the car parts in long term. Thus, the researchers in the field of organic chemistry are required to create varying gasoline formulations that suit different model of vehicles and provide distinct performance desired. 

 

3.       Processing 

When it comes to the industrial processing of the oil and gas harvested, organic chemistry lays the fundamental knowledge on how to properly treat the crude oil to produce high-value fuels and petrochemicals products as well as the precise and clean separation of the crude oil. There are 3 key phases involved: fractional distillation, cracking and reforming. 

a)       Fractional distillation: Segregates the mixture of hydrocarbon compounds in the crude oil into different fractions based on their corresponding relative volatility in the distillation tower.

b)      Cracking: The process of converting the high-molecular weight hydrocarbon molecules to low-molecular weight hydrocarbon molecules under very high temperature (around 900 degree celsius) to increase the yield of the profitable petrochemical products.

c)       Reforming: The process of converting the straight chain alkane compounds to mixtures of aromatic hydrocarbons or branched-chain alkanes in order to obtain desired products. The addition of metal catalysts such as platinum is necessary in this step.  

In a nutshell, it is all about the chemical reactions, its mechanism, identifying the physical and chemical properties of the hydrocarbon components of each of the fractions from crude oil, as well as figuring out the best solution to harvest and subsequently converting them into profitable products through a highly-efficient, economic and environmental-friendly manner that the industry is interested in. Thus, this concludes how organic chemistry contribute to the development of the oil and gas industry.