Description

When people consider petroleum, they first think of energy. Petroleum and other fossil fuels now provide more than 86% of the energy consumed by mankind. In addition, fossil resources, especially petroleum and natural gas, serve as the organic source of tens of thousands of consumer products, which enrich our daily lives.

To understand petroleum and the petroleum industry, one must be familiar with the technology used to find and recover crude oil and natural gas and transform them into useful products. These technologies can also be applied to gases and liquids from coal, shale, and renewable biomass. Research and development aimed at improving or modifying existing technologies and developing new ones usually require physical testing and chemical characterization.