Petroleum Engineering final research Paper - Essay Example

While engineering and research have developed methods of extracting different petroleum products from crude oil in practical approaches, the academic and the overall public domain is unable to know from research how exactly the formation of crude oil takes place as many theories exist within the sources credited as scholarly articles and approved books. Given the increasing threat of reading and believing various sources in existence, this essay seeks to answer the following question as it relates to petroleum engineering and research on petroleum production: Research Question If petroleum engineering was developed through research on petroleum formation, why is it that petroleum engineering follows the same concepts and methods of processing while petroleum research on petroleum formation differs considerably?

LITERATURE REVIEW 1. Research on Petroleum a. Formation of crude oil ‘The origin of oil’ is a phrase that anyone can take a wild guess and appear right on. From time immemorial, societies have become accustomed to the popular believe that crude oil is a product from the interiors of the earth. However, while the origin or oil has been researched on, most research tends to lean on where crude oil exists or where around the world oil can be drilled. Research goes further to explain that the origin of oil is a phenomenon that can be explained through the consideration of hydrocarbons undergoing gradual changes within the confinements of the earth’s crust.

According to Bluemale & Manz (2), crude oil is constituted of 50-95% of hydrocarbons. While chemical engineering is a crucial input in the field of petroleum research, some sources fall short of relevant information regarding the types and actual chemical components of these hydrocarbons. Research by other researchers indicate that the formation of crude is an indefinite process upon which most researchers have relied on theories rather than taking a practical approach in identifying the actual process of crude oil formation.

In statistics, forecasts are made through the consideration of the mean in order to predict the occurrence of some results. While the field of quantitative data can use means to predict outcomes, it is unable to use the same method to predict results from qualitative data. For example, the different researches on the formation of crude oil cannot be reduced to an average concept. This therefore discredits such research conclusion that crude oil is made up of 50-95% of hydrocarbons. The 50-95% gap is way too wide to show substantiality of the research as it is impossible to believe that one bottle of the original coca cola can have 50-95% sugar content and still be classified under the same category of either diet coca cola or the original sugar-rich product. b. Chemical Composition The formation of petroleum has been able to produce substantial evidence of how chemicals are combined or developed to become petroleum.

In this case, the scientific inability is influenced by timeline as scientists are unable to reproduce 100 million years. While the impossibility is logical, the mentioning of 100 million years may has well be wrong as the determinant of the period