Tag: crude oil

Oil and gas production

The World Top 10 Oil Producers

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Offshore oil and gas production and processing platforms and facility.

 

In 2018, daily world oil production amounts to around 92 million barrels per day, increasing slightly 0.7% from previous year.

Here are the world top ten oil producers according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) in 2017:

  1. USA – 15.6 Million barrels of oil per day
  2. Saudi Arabia – 12.1 Million BOPD
  3. Russia – 11.2 Million BOPD
  4. Canada – 5.0 Million BOPD
  5. China – 4.8 Million BOPD
  6. Iran – 4.7 Million BOPD
  7. Iraq – 4.5 Million BOPD
  8. UAE – 3.7 Million BOPD
  9. Brazil – 3.4 Million BOPD
  10. Kuwait – 2.9 Million BOPD

The USA is the largest oil producer in the world in 2017. The production of crude oil in the USA is expected to increase into 2019. The USA is also the world’s largest consumer of oil. Its daily oil consumption in 2019 is projected to increase by 340,000 barrels to 20.65 million barrels, according to EIA.

EIA reported on 21 December 2018 United States produced a total of 16.3 million barrels per day of crude oil and natural gas liquids in November 2018.  This total production consists of 11.7 million BPD of crude oil and 4.6 BPD of natural gas liquids or NGL.

Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, is the largest oil exporting country. As the most well-known and influential oil producer, it has 260 billion barrels of oil reserves, which is about 22% of the world’s oil reserves.

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Why synthetic lubricating oil lasts longer than mineral oil?

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The traditional oil we use to lubricate our car engine is called mineral oil because it is derived from crude oil. Mineral oil consists of hydrocarbon molecules extracted from the distillation of crude oil. They are mainly alkanes in the range of C-15 to C- 40.

An alkane is a saturated hydrocarbon consisting of only carbon and hydrogen atoms. Also called paraffin, it has the general formula of CnH2n+2. The simplest alkane is methane, CH4, where the n=1.

Due to the chemical and physical properties of the hydrocarbon alkanes, they have limited resistance to oxidation and thermal breakdown at very high temperature.

Synthetic oil, on the other hand, consists of synthetic molecules. They are artificially made and specially designed to provide excellent lubrication and stability at very high and also at low temperature. Since these synthetic molecules do not deteriorate easily, they can last longer than mineral oil even at extreme conditions in an engine.

Synthetic oil is more expensive than mineral oil, nevertheless, it is a superior lubricant to keep your car healthy. With mineral oil, it is recommended you change the oil every 5000 to 10,000 miles. Whereas using synthetic oil, you may change the oil every 20,000 miles.

Finally, it is important to note regardless of the type of oil you use, you should change your engine oil based on the recommended interval because it gets contaminated with combustion by-products that accumulate at about the same rate regardless of oil type.