Strange Facts and Amazing Articles
A35: The Price of Crude
COROLLARY THEOREMS: Mathematics is built on two basic operations only
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 1 standard crude oil barrel = 158.978 [liters]Chemical industry is the true "gold mine" today, and in the future: nothing comes not even close to it. For example, if the software industry pumps billions of revenue dollars per year, chemical industry is capable of doing the same thing in one day--even better! Now, specific to our chemical industry is, it is crude oil driven. There are alternatives to crude oil, and they are way cleaner, but this "bad Juju" oil thing allows for billions of USD to be "earned" overnight out of thin air, based on market speculations: the "sweet" is sweeter than anything else! There are many interesting facts about oil, and they are little known; therefore, we decided we should summarize them in this article. First of all, the main idea is, we do not know how the oil was formed, only this is the "official" version; the truth about oil's origin is fairly unsettling. Crude oil is officially classified as a "rock" or "mineral"--liquid, but still a natural mineral rock. Oil was formed from animal organisms and plants. Coal, on the other hand, was formed from plants [vegetal matter] only. It is possible we are burning in our engines entire Civilizations of once living people--just like us--which ended catastrophically, long time ago. The least troublesome scenario is, crude oil was formed from animals: sea animals, dinosaurs, or whatever. In support to the above theory is, each oil reserve is different from any other. In other words, crude oil is particular to its origin, therefore trade people use names like "Nigerian Sweet", "Iraqi Light", "Saudi Heavy", "North Sea Brent", which name in fact specific chemical qualities. Crude oil is a carbon-based organic natural product, but each reserve in the World has particular additions of inorganic impurities--which are not wanted, because they poison our air. For example, Libyan oil is one of the worst, since it contains a lot of sulfur and vanadium. When an oil tanker ship spills crude oil, the environmentalists cry out as hard as they can: POLLUTION! No, dear people, crude oil is a natural product, therefore it is not a "true" pollutant. Pollutants are only the products resultant from oil processing, and from other chemical by-products, as is DDT, DIOXIN, some fertilizers, insecticide, and finally the detergents we use: these are THE greatest pollutants of our environment. Sure, crude oil will kill few birds and some fish at first, and it will spill dirt on the beaches, but it is still a natural product; it is not a poison. In one year or two, crude oil hardens, and it ceases to be a danger for wildlife. There is nothing wrong with protecting the environment, only we have to do it intelligently because other pollutants (fertilizers, detergents, shampoos, liquid soaps, etc.) are way, way more dangerous/pollutant. Let see the top 20 (official) crude oil reserves in the World in 2006, according to OSHA-USA [Occupational Health and Safety Administration]. |
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 In red above are the countries that are directly or indirectly under the USA driven market exchange. Please be aware the above table doesn't say too much, because there are strong/important strategies driving the oil market. The data presented above represents only 56.98% of the actual World reserves; the rest 43.01% is scattered in the "rest of the world" countries. Note that the above information is the "official version". Major oil players have no intention to reveal the true state of things, because the threat of depleted oil reserves allows for huge price fluctuations, therefore for profits of billions in one single day, out of "thin air"! The reserves of crude oil are at least double the official version. Three major regions hiding enormous oil reserves are not officially included in any tables: 1. Siberia 2. Alaska 3. The Planetary Ocean (this includes the entire water surface) In addition, there are huge reserves of natural gas and methane which replace crude oil perfectly well. Even the coal reserves may replace oil--during the 2nd World War the Germans have perfected the method of creating synthetic gasoline from coal. The truth is, there are more than sufficient resources to start replacing the entire oil industry with hydrogen, silicon, and ceramics if we want to, during the next 50 years. Unfortunately, the problem is THE PROFITS! As mentioned, the profits in the oil industry are huge. In fact, they are so huge that, today, when the price of one barrel of crude is about 60 USD, the true price of gasoline at the gas pumps should be about 40 cents (US cents), not 1.2 USD. It is all about the oil strategy. For example, in N America the latest "motivation" is: "we do not have sufficient oil refinery capacity". Of course it is not; it happens that very many companies asked for permission to build new oil refineries for tens of years, but they didn't get the approvals. The market is rapaciously and securely held into the hands of the few "big ones", using hefty bribes, influence, corruption, and all sort of miseries: all paid by the unaware, hard working, poor average citizens who trust their dear governments are doing the right things for them. It doesn't work that way, dear fellow citizens. Well! Crude oil is processed in few steps, as follows: 1. distillation (or refinery) 2. thermal cracking 3. catalytic cracking and polymerization 4. advanced chemical treatment The first step of processing, distillation, is the one used to "motivate" the high price of gasoline at the gas pumps as being directly related to the crude oil barrel price. However, the next steps of advanced processing are able to raise the benefits up to 10 000 USD (excluding the operating costs) per 1 (one) barrel of crude oil! Sorry, this figure of 10 000 USD could be impressive, but it is relative. Only a very small part of crude oil can be processed to that enormous figure of 10 000 USD per barrel; most oil brings an average of 200 USD profit per barrel. Things are this way. Crude oil is a carbon-based organic "mineral"; it is a mixture of hundreds organic compounds named "hydrocarbons". Each hydrocarbon compound is very precious. In crude oil we found the following major groups of components: 1. paraffins (methane, ethane, propane, butane, isobutane, pentane, hexane) 2. aromatics (benzene, cyclohexane, methyl cyclopentane) 3. alkenes (ethylene, propylene, butene, izobutene) 4. dienes and alkynes (1,2-bytadiene, 1,3-butadiene, acetilene) 5. sulfur compounds (sulfur, hydrogen sulphide) 6. oxygen compounds (phenols, ketones, and carboxylic acids) 7. nitrogen compounds (they also include few dangerous combinations with metals, such as copper, vanadium, nickel.) 8. trace metals (iron, copper, vanadium) 9. salts (hydrogen chloride, natrium/sodium chloride, magnesium chloride, calcium chloride) 10. carbon dioxide 11. naphthenic acids (this is a particular group of organic acids) Now, after processing chemically crude oil, we obtain a wide range of useful/needed substances. Consider, for example, the following major groups of products: 1. gasoline 2. kerosene (jet fuel) 3. liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) 4. other fuel distillates 5. residual fuels (for power generation industry, and for marine engines) 6. coke and asphalt 7. solvents (some are very expensive) 8. petrochemical products (excluding plastics) such as paints (10 mg of printer ink sells appx. for 10 USD) and detergents 9. lubricants (again, some are very expensive) 10. leaded gasoline additives 11. plastics (some types of plastics are very, very expensive) 12. medicinal drugs (most drugs are sold at over 1000 times the actual costs in N. America) The problem is, we, the individuals, have a limited need for plastics or printer ink per month, but we do consume a lot of gasoline; therefore, although we could easily get 10 000 USD out of one barrel of crude oil we do not do it. That is the reason nobody can state with a clean conscience what is the end-benefit in USD of one processed crude oil barrel: it depends on the needs of the market. However, the more we consume expensive plastics and paints, the higher are the benefits. Just a rough estimation of ours, the benefits from one crude oil barrel are on average 200 USD. The tricky part is, we are faced with enormous market exchange price fluctuations: there is where the average citizen is "milked" of his/her hard-earned USDs. The oil exporter countries never get the exchange rate for their crude [they do get enormous benefits out of oil anyway]; possibly, oil exporters get less than half of the official exchange rate. Therefore, the exchange rate of crude is just a theoretical reference used mostly for market speculations--based on the threat of depleted oil reserves. Of course, oil reserves are diminishing with each passing day, but there is more than sufficient to help us switch the entire petrochemical industry to the alternatives in the future. Not to mention that, indeed, using oil derivates is THE major source of pollution today. Two aspects are worth mentioning. First, for Mr. Al Gore who has started on an intensive campaign to curb carbon dioxide emissions--which is very good. However, carbon dioxide is a component of the "photosynthesis natural cycle": plants "consume" carbon dioxide and they produce pure oxygen in exchange. Therefore, one very efficient way to reduce carbon dioxide is reforestation. The true dangerous pollutants when burning gasoline are the nitrogen compounds, sulfur compounds, and hydrocarbon compounds. Secondly, we need plastics a lot. It would be a very wise policy to keep as much crude oil as we can for petrochemical and plastics industries, because they are far more important for us, now, and in the future, than burning gasoline. The truly interesting aspect is, we do have technological replacements for almost the entire petroleum industry, and those replacements are superior in quality, and a lot less polluting. Most petrochemical products may be replaced by silicon-based products--silicon is obtained from sand. Plastics may be replaced (again) by silicon based products, and by ceramics (also silicon in nature). For fuels, we have to switch to the hydrogen industry, and the sooner we do that, the better things will be for us. In addition, vegetal mater provides sufficient cellulose which may be further processed for many of our "plastics" needs.  To end this, the oil industry is controlled by few, very secret governmental strategies, by the big oil companies, and by the market exchange profiteers: all work together to rip us off using "threats", inventions, and lies. However, it is in our power to start controlling them, democratically, to the hundredth of the cent. *** First published on October 8, 2006 |
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