By Andi AB Salahuddin* – Senior Reservoir Geologist

The history of petroleum exploration and production and the use of their by-products for the humankind benefit are almost as long as the history of human civilization itself. There are many ancient stories mentioned about natural oil seepages being used around 25 centuries ago by the ancient Babylonians and the primeval Chinese societies. In fact, bitumen being utilized for city walls and towers construction since 40 centuries ago in Babylon.

Early History
Around 450 BC, Herodotus wrote about the presence of oil seeps in Cathage (now Tunisia) and in the Zachynthus islands, Greek. Herodotus in his book also mentioned the existence of oil extraction from wells in Arderrica (Iran). The wells could not have been very deep as the oil was extracted in a leather pouch attached to a wooden stick with limited length that was fastened to the ground. Oil, salt, and asphalt were produced simultaneously from this well. As a summary, in many parts of the world throughout the first millennium, oil and asphalt were obtained easily from natural seepage that emerged from the ground.

During the early periods, the gathered oil was used solely for medication, a mixture of water-proofing material, and for warfare purposes. As medicines, oil was used externally to treat wounds or rheumatism and it also sometimes consumed as a laxative. Ancient Persian written records mentioned the use of petroleum as medicine and lighting especially among the upper classes society. In China in 347, oil was produced from bamboo-drilled wells which were operated manually. Cable-tool drilling technique using ropes had been applied in China since at least the first century BC. In this technique, the drilling tool was suspended to an established bamboo turret that towering up to 60 meters high. In that period, however, the drilling technology had been developed to search for artesian water instead of for petroleum. British explorers in 1795 documented a booming oil extraction industry with hundreds of manual hand-excavated producing wells in Yenangyaung (Myanmar) as shown in Figure 1.
Written reports noted that there were hundreds of manual hand-dug wells under production.

Since the periods of Noah, tar and asphalt had been used to coat the boat hence watertight. Tar, asphalt, and petroleum have long been used on the battlefield. When Alexander the Great invaded India in 326 BC, he sprinkled the Indian elephant corps with burning tar. In other historical account, it was written that Nadir Shah in 1739 practiced a similar trick where camel troops were oiled and then sending them aflame approaching the Indian elephant troops which were eventually defeated. Greek Fire was first discovered by Callinicus of Heliopolis in 668. The employed material is unknown exactly but it is thought that the fire could flare long with the help of lime, sulfur, and naphtha. The Greek Fire is known as one of the powerful weapons that were commonly used by the Greek navy during the Byzantine period.

Modern History
In the modern period, petroleum products are becoming increasingly important as they are able to impact the economy, technology, and politics sectors of a country. Oil refined products is increasingly necessary with the invention of the motor vehicle or engine and the increasing number of commercial aviation. Besides, oil refined products are also used by industrial organic chemistry for instance plastics, fertilizers, and pesticides that develop rapidly. In 1694, United Kingdom issued a concession management rights to Eele, Hancock, and Portlock to extract asphalt and tar in Shropshire. Other written note also mentioned that asphalt and tar have been explored since the 18th century in Wietze, Saxony. The first well in Europe made specifically for finding oil was drilled in 1745, at Pechelbronn, France. At that time, Louis XV granted a license to Sorbonniere not only to drill the wells into the oil sands, but also to make oil refineries.

The birth of the oil industry is credited to the service and efforts made by James Young who extracted oil from clay layers in Torban (Scotland) and subsequently set up a refinery in 1847. The resultant products of his refinery including ammonia, solid paraffin and liquid paraffin (kerosene). A year later, Young set up a better refinery to enhance crude oil products. He distilled coal at low temperatures, and finally managed to create a petroleum-resemble fluid. Young named his discovery products as paraffin oil because of its similarity to the paraffin at low temperatures. The finding was then patented in 1850 and became the world’s first commercial oil by-product made by the first modern oil refinery. Since then, the market for liquid hydrocarbons was growing rapidly.

Until the mid-nineteenth century, asphalt and oil were obtained only from seepage and shallow excavation. Before the modern oil exploration begun, cable-tool drilling was the only established technique that existed only in search of water. In the Western World, the first well drilled to search for oil was executed in the Oil Creek, Pennsylvania, by Colonel Drake in 1859 (Figure 2). Drilling technology applied by Drake was actually derived from Chinese workers who travelled to the United States to work on the railroad installation industry. Prior to the Drake’s well, the wells in the region were water well that produced minor oil as a impurity.

Since the discovery of the Drake wells, oil drilling business in other parts of the world growing rapidly along with the increasing market demand for petroleum as fuel for lighting. Major stimulus of the rapid market request was due to the invention of machines for industries and for motor vehicles in the 1870s and 1880s. The market demand for light petroleum gradually surpassed that for kerosene. At the beginning of the 20th century, demand for crude oil soared again because of the fuel need for war vehicles during the First World War (1914-1918).

In the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), in 1871 a Dutch merchant named Jan Reerink, found oil seeps in Majalengka, located at downhill slope of Mount Ciremai, to the Southwest of Cirebon City, West Java. The oil was seeping from Tertiary age rocks that exposed to the surface. Following this finding, he then executed the first ever oil well drilled in Indonesia where the well was drilled using cow-driven pump. In total, there were four wells drilled with cumulative production rate of 6,000 liters of oil per day. This was in fact marked the historical first oil production in Indonesia. Being in mind that this occasion was only twelve years after the first oil well in the world drilled by Drake in the state of Pennsylvania, USA. Hence the petroleum industry in Indonesia is considered as one of the oil extraction pioneers in the world.

In the 1920s, the oil industry was dominated by seven large companies, referred as the “Seven Sisters” by Enrico Mattei. The companies are: British Petroleum and Shell (European); Exxon (Esso), Gulf, Texaco, Mobil and Socal (Chevron) from the United States. British Petroleum and Shell discovered their oil reserves mainly in the Middle East and East/South-East Asia respectively. They quantifying their oil reserves with a tonne. The American companies, on the other hand, used barrel as oil volume unit. The American companies began overseas ventures especially in Central and South America, in the 1920s. In the 1930s, the Arabian-American Oil Company (Aramco, now Saudi Aramco) was established from a consortium of Socal, Texaco, Mobil, and Exxon.

Following the Second World War, there was an economic booming in almost all parts of the world. This gave an idea to the oil consortium to expand its business in other regions. Oil companies risked their profit received from a producing area for oil exploration in new concession. To reduce the risk of exploration failure, some companies combine to form an oil consortium.

As to other business segments, an oil company is established to maximize profit. Hence they export oil from the producing countries with the lowest possible cost and then sell it in the world market with the highest possible price. It was quite common, however, that there were some companies which selling oil slightly below the market price for the expense of its competitors.

Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was established in Baghdad (Iraq) in 1960, initially consisted of Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. Membership was then extended to include Algeria, Ecuador, Gabon, Indonesia, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates. Terms of membership is that the country’s economy should be dominated by oil exports. Therefore, the United States and Britain are not eligible for membership. By the mid-1970s, OPEC was producing two-thirds of total world oil production. The aim of OPEC is to control the power of the private oil companies by ways of controlling the world oil prices and also to the appropriation of the company’s assets.

Many OPEC members have oil as their only natural resources. Once the oil is depleted, they will have no assets unless they are able to maximize their oil revenues to be invested for the development of other industries. The main goal of OPEC to control global oil prices has been notably successful. In 1970, OPEC controlled the oil prices to become very high and it definitely provided great benefits for its members. In contrast however, it contributed to a global recession that affected not only poor countries but also developing ones.

For OPEC members, there is a regulation saying that the country should be able to control the state oil company’s activities. For instances Pertamina in Indonesia or PDVSA (Venezuela). The rule was then being adopted by non-OPEC countries such as Statoil (Norway), Petronas (Malaysia), Petrocan (Canada), and Britoil (England).

Development of Petroleum Exploration Techniques
Since the days of ancient Babylonians until the modern petroleum industry cartel, the roles and responsibilities of petroleum explorationists became increasingly demanding and challenging. In the earlier periods, oil was found easily through the seepage, or simply by shallow bamboo-drilled wells which could reach down to 60 meters depth. In the 1850s, the explorationists and drillers utilized creekology method where they believed that oil is more easily found by wells drilled on river bottoms than by those on top of the hills (Figure 3).

In 1861, an American geologist named Hunt introduced Anticlinal Oil Entrapment theory to explain the creekology phenomenon. This theory has been proven, and up to the present day the search for anticline structure has become one of the most successful exploration concepts ever. Results and experiences from subsequent geological studies and drilling outcomes concluded that oil is not only trapped in the anticline structure but also in stratigraphic trap or combination trap (Figure 4). Stratigraphic trap could occur because of variations in the depositional process, erosion, or reservoir diagenesis.

At the end part of the nineteenth century until the early part of twentieth, oil exploration was based on surface geological mapping to search for anticline structure. In the mid-1920s, geophysical methods such as seismic refraction, gravity, and magnetic were applied to map the subsurface structures (Figure 5). In the same period, geophysical methods were also applied to describe the physical properties of rocks along the wellbore, which is referred as borehole logging. Electric logging was first performed in Pechelbronn, France, in 1927. Sonic logging and radioactive logging techniques were introduced subsequently.

Geological survey of aerial photography began in 1920s. Its utilization was increasing broadly after the Second World War because its cost is getting cheaper to allow for surveying large concession areas. This kind of survey was very effective in areas with less vegetation hence the surface geological structure could be clearly identified, such as in the desert regions of North Africa, the Middle East, and Australia.

In the early of twentieth century, one of the techniques used in oil exploration was micropaleontology which was designed to identify subsurface rocks zonation. In the late 1950s until the early 1960s, study on the surface sedimentary environment was first conducted in Galveston (Texas), Mississippi Delta, Carbonates Bahama, and the Arabian Gulf. The study results provided new insights and were used as an analog to interpret property variations of the subsurface rocks such as geometry, porosity, and permeability.

In the 1970s, rapid advance took place in the fields of geophysics and geochemistry. The advent of computers with high speed and large capacity enabled significant advances in seismic data processing. In addition, it also allowed continuous visualization and imaging of 2D seismic dataset which represents subsurface rock layering. Paralelly, geochemistry was growing rapidly which marked by the introduction of concepts in source rock maturity and hydrocarbon quantity that migrated to reservoir trap. The maturity concept is particularly useful during exploration stage on new and unproven concessions which are not in production yet (Figure 6).

 

In the 1980s, computer technology advanced even more significant than before. It led to the initiation of 3D seismic survey that enabled subsurface seismic layers to be visualized in 3D, geometry detection of petroleum reservoirs, and detection of oil-saturated reservoir. This went hand in hand with the innovation in visualization technology that allowed the explorationist visualizing the porosity and oil saturation logs along wellbore (Figure 7).

In the 1990s, noteworthy advances in petroleum exploration technology was characterized by the introduction of new methods in the form of satellites remote-sensing techniques and surface geochemical imaging. Furthermore, shallow geophysical method got progressive and allowed the identification of micro-seepage and conductivity fluctuations of rocks above the petroleum accumulation. Such methods had, in fact, been introduced in the petroleum exploration industry since half a century earlier but had not been widely accepted yet by the industry because they have not been proven at that period.

Figure 7 – Petroleum Geoscientists are evaluating proposed oil well location in a 3-dimensional visualization room (Figure is from Arabian Oil and Gas website)
Basic Science Context for Modern Petroleum Exploration
Petroleum exploration is the application of earth science with the aim to analyze the subsurface for the finding and production of petroleum. Simply put, earth science is defined as the study of subsurface rocks through the analogy of outcrops rocks at surface. The earth science itself is growing based on the basic sciences application of chemistry, physics, and biology, which involving the application of concepts to observed data.

Geochemistry is the application of basic chemistry science to the study of rocks. Geochemistry has many benefits in petroleum exploration. One example is the importance of knowledge in rock mineralogy composition. In the early stages of exploration, in depth knowledge of reservoir mineralogy enables the explorationists to assess the deterioration of reservoir porosity due to subsidence and loading. Knowledge of the oil chemistry can be used to predict their effects on the stability of the reservoir mineralogy that can lead to an escalation or reduction of reservoir porosity. Furthermore, organic chemistry plays an important role in the analysis of how the organic compounds of plants and animals in the rocks alter into petroleum.

Geophysics is the application of basic science of physics to the study of rocks, mainly to describe the geometry of the subsurface layers and oil entrapment structure. In addition, modern geophysical methods allow the prediction of reservoir properties through seismic inversion technique.

The basic science of biology is applied to petroleum exploration in several ways. One of them is through the study of fossils and their living environments (paleontology) which is remarkably essential in building biostratigraphy zonation for reservoir layer correlation.

Activities Stage of Modern Oil Exploration & Production
Petroleum exploration is just one aspect of activities employed in the Exploration and Production (E & P) of oil. Expertise from other disciplines are also needed, as illustrated in Figure 8. The required skills include New Venture expertise that is heavily involved in the acquisition of a block or concession. Preliminary geophysical survey is required prior to making a recommendation on the block that will be leased or the location of exploration wells. Geological concept is then applied to the geophysical interpretation. Shortly after a well drilled by a drilling engineer and found economical oil accumulation, oil reserves assessment will be done by drilling several subsequent appraisal wells.

Figure 8 – Graph showing a multidisciplinary approach in the modern oil E & P
Petroleum Engineering discipline is apprehensive with the most effective effort to produce oil from the subsurface, oil reserves estimation, and oil distribution in a reservoir (Figure 9). But keep in mind that the main basis for the exploration and production of oil is the economy. From business point of view, oil companies exist not only to find oil reserves but also, like any other business venture, to obtain maximum financial profit. Hence in each E&P activity, ranging from leasing equipment for drilling, production, until exploration of new oil accumulations, it is closely monitored by accountants and economists.

Therefore it can be concluded that historically, petroleum exploration and production technologies have evolved from a very simple approach to a leading-edge techniques, which involved multidisciplinary aspects of sciences and technologies.

Figure 9 – Diagram of modern oil E & P

References
• Dott, H. and Reynolds, M. J. 1969. “Source Book for Petroleum Geology”. American Association of Petroleum Geologist Memoar No. 5. Tulsa, OK.
• Herodotus, H. c. 450 BC. “The Histories”.
• Messadie, G. 1995. “The Wordsworth Dictionary of Inventions”. Chambers, Edinburgh.
• Owen, E. W. 1975. “Trek of the Oil Finders: A History of Exploration for Petroleum”. American Association of Petroleum Geologist. Tulsa, OK.
• Pratt, W. E. and Good, D. 1950. “World Geography of Petroleum”. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
• Redwood, Sir B. 1913. “A Treatise on Petroleum”. Vol.1. Griffin, London
• Sampson, A. 1975. “The Seven Sisters”. Hodden & Stoughton, London.

External Links
• http://aoghs.org/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yenangyaung
• https://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sejarah_Perminyakan_di_Indonesia
• http://www.aapg.org/
• http://www.arabianoilandgas.com/
• http://www.dnr.louisiana.gov/
• https://www.usgs.gov/

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*Chairman of IATMI – UAE for the period of 2018 – 2021

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This article has been published on https://www.indosporacapital.com