March 7, 2024 • 25 mins
Get ready to dive into the intricate yet fascinating world of oil and gas as Brendan McDougall, an industry professional, and William Belevance, a diligent geology student, dissect this complex industry in an easy-to-understand approach. In this brand-new episode of 'From Fossil to Fuel 2.0', the duo embark on a journey to elucidate every stage of oil and gas industry.
Whether youre a novice or a seasoned professional, you'll gain a fresh perspective as Brendan and William provide a comprehensive understanding of oil and gas formation: from life-transforming natural substances to the transformative process resulting in coal, light oil, and natural gas. Listen as they unravel the process of how organic matter evolves, the decomposition process of oil and gas, and the creation of hydrocarbon chains.
But the exploration doesn't stop there. The hosts go a step further, explaining what happens when oil and gas forms, debunking common misconceptions, and discussing the essential elements behind the migration of oil and gas from deep within the Earth's layers to the surface. This episode promises to be full of engaging explanations and comparisons that will leave you with a better understanding of this essential industry.
Finally, don't miss out on the cliffhanger for the next episode diving into rock geology, porosity, and permeability. Are you ready to embark on this enlightening journey? Join Brendan and William as they guide you through the incredible process of going 'From Fossil to Fuel'.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
From Fossil to Fuel with Brendan McDougall and William Belevance.
This is Oil & Gas 101, taking you through the entire fundamentals from geology
to refining without the use of a textbook.
Hey everybody, I'm Brendan McDougall. Welcome to the podcast from Fossil to Fuel 2.0.
And I'm William Belevance. I'm Brendan's younger brother, so I'm the fuel and he's the fossil.
(00:29):
Nice. I'm the older one. The older and wiser one.
Let's get started. Just wanted to start things off for the listeners here,
do a bit of an introduction.
My name is Brendan McDougall. I'm a professional engineer. I work in oil and gas.
Worked in a few different roles, a few different companies.
And for those of you who haven't listened to this before, this is from Fossil to Fuel.
(00:52):
It's a podcast about the fundamentals of oil and gas. And really kind of what
we're after here is sort of a wide range, a wide spectrum for the entire industry.
And so for anyone who's new to oil and gas, anyone who works in oil and gas,
who's non-technical or really for the general public.
Anytime that you're looking for something in oil and gas, typically online,
(01:17):
you're probably going to run into one of two scenarios.
One is you're going to find something that's way too technical for your level
of expertise. expertise, or two, you're probably just going to find like a narrow segment of it.
And so I know even for myself, when I started off in my career back in 2008,
I really didn't know too much about oil and gas.
(01:38):
And so, you know, you go to Google something online and I can find anything.
I mean, really, there's not a whole lot on oil and gas that has gotten a little
bit better over the last decade.
But even still, like there's not a whole lot out there.
And so, you know, that's kind of the drive to where this whole thing came from
is to create some form of digital media that was really the fundamentals of
(02:02):
oil and gas, really for anybody.
And so I came up with this concept, oh, geez, probably four or five years ago,
where myself as a technical person in oil and gas, I wanted to learn more about
the financial side and the business.
So I started educating myself and taking some courses to learn more about that.
(02:23):
And I went, well, heck, if I'm seeing the benefit to learn more about the financial
and business side, even from a fundamental perspective,
there's an opportunity for me to reciprocate and provide some material like
this. And so that's kind of where this whole concept came from.
And so it's from fossil to fuel because it's literally the whole spectrum of
(02:44):
oil and gas from fossil, how everything was formed, right through to fuel,
like the diesel or gasoline that we burn in our cars.
So it's literally the formation, geology, drilling, fracking,
production reserves, all the way through to refining. It's the whole thing at a high level.
And so for those of you who have listened to the previous version of the podcast,
(03:05):
because this is really from Fossil to Fuel 2.0.
I spent the last four years sort of designing and recording and making this
from Fossil to Fuel podcast on my own.
I did it in my home office with my crappy laptop and my $100 mic I got off Amazon,
went through, did this whole thing.
And I actually released the podcast last October, 2019.
(03:29):
Very well received, but generally the consensus was that, that,
well, for one, the audio quality sucked because it's just me in my home office.
And two, the format of it, which was really kind of just me lecturing the audience,
wasn't as interactive as your typical podcast. So we made some changes.
(03:49):
We're redoing this whole thing.
We're recording live at the Ear Candy Studio. Shout out to Bo for helping us out here.
So we're redoing the podcast professionally. Hopefully my voice sounds quite
a bit better this time around than it did the first time.
And we brought in a co-host. And so the concept there is to bring in an individual who.
(04:11):
Who can help make the process a little bit more interactive,
more of a conversation or dialogue than a lecture.
And to bring in someone who is probably more representative of the average person
in society, who probably knows a little bit about oil and gas from reading it
in the news or online digital media.
But someone who is a little bit more relatable to the average person.
(04:34):
And so who better to bring in than my brother?
My brother, William Belovance, is joining us today and really for the remainder
of the podcast series to help kind of star the show and have the average person
relate to learning about oil and gas, literally from fossil to fuel.
So, William, welcome to the show.
(04:55):
For the listeners out there, maybe just tell us a little bit about yourself. Awesome.
Hi, everyone. I'm William Belovance, and I'm a student in natural sciences,
concentrating in geology and mathematics.
I have a foundational background in geology.
I don't have too much background in oil and gas.
(05:16):
My main focus in geology has been on earth systems and climate,
but I'm hoping to land on some of the same questions that other people might have.
So without further ado, let's get started. Right on. Thanks.
So for everybody listening out there from all of our family dinners and stuff,
William's probably got a little bit of an intro to what oil and gas is and what his brother does.
(05:39):
I think it'd be fairly representative here. So from fossil to fuel.
So when I say fossil fuel, what do you think a fossil fuel is when people talk about that?
Well, probably just from the name, you can kind of understand that it's a fuel,
some form of energy that has come from a fossil, which is something that was
(06:01):
buried underground of something that was previously alive.
So, from a fossil fuel, that's about what it is.
Yeah. No, no, yeah, no, that's good. That's good. Good. So a fossil fuel,
oil and gas basically is what it is.
When we talk about the origin of fossil fuels, one of the questions I field
(06:22):
a lot is dinosaurs, right?
So a lot of people think fossil fuels all came from dinosaurs.
And while that is true, the analogy I always give is think about it this way.
Fossil fuels are derived from organic matter. So organic matter matter is really
just something that was alive at some point in time.
(06:43):
And so, for fossil fuels, we're typically talking about hundreds of millions of years ago.
A fossil fuel or organic matter was something that was alive.
And so, while dinosaurs were alive 100 million years ago, really,
they would make up a very, very small percentage of what ends up becoming a fossil fuel.
And so, the example I would give today is that if you go in a forest and there's
(07:07):
a bear, bear and, you know, bear dies over time, gets deposited,
buried, and the bear becomes oil and gas.
Relative to everything else in that forest, the bear is just like a very,
very, very infinitesimal, small amount of organic matter, right?
It's everything else. It's the trees, the bushes, the grass.
So a lot of oil and gas or fossil fuels, while they would have been derived
(07:32):
from dinosaurs or other animals living at the time,
the vast, vast majority of oil and gas originated as either plant life or some
form of like algae or bacteria.
Right. Yeah. So I guess just wanted to clear up a little bit of a misconception there.
So fossil fuels, cool. So they started off as organic matter.
(07:53):
What do you know about the process of deposition? Can you tell me a little bit
about what you understand of that process?
So for deposition, for example, if it happens in certain environments,
like at the bottom of a lake, for example, where it has a river feeding into
the lake, bringing in sediments.
So if something, some fish, for example,
(08:15):
dies and its body sinks to the bottom of the lake,
then through this river sediments are deposited
on top of it and over time more and
more layers get deposited and other areas
get eroded to net produce a deeper and deeper lithification of of those fossils
(08:36):
yeah that's exactly right so if something is living it dies if it's in an aquatic
environment falls to the bottom of the lake or the ocean and over time material
gets deposited on top of it.
Same kind of thing is if you look at archaeologists who are digging up the ruins
of the Roman Empire per se, right? So that was like 2000 years ago.
(08:56):
And so they're having to dig up all of these excavations because over time,
dirt and rock and sediment has been deposited on top of that.
Now think the Roman Empire was only 2000 years ago. Imagine how deep these deposits
get if if you're talking about 100 million years ago, right?
And so the deposition process is important because as these pieces of organic
(09:22):
matter get deeper and deeper under the surface of the earth.
What do you think happens with pressure and temperature?
From what I understand, as you get deeper into the earth, more and more stuff
piles on top of each other. So the pressure would increase.
And as well the heat comes
from the center of the earth so as you get closer to
(09:43):
the center temperature increases as well yeah exactly
right so you got pressure going up you got temperature going up like william
said the closer to the center of the earth which is i think most people would
probably be able to guess that it's hot at the center of the earth so the deeper
you get the hotter it gets and then in terms of pressure i mean really just
think about it you know if you you have a doggy pile, right?
(10:05):
For me, I don't know what that is. If you have people pile on top of you,
you can feel the weight of people on top of you, pushing down on you.
So if I were to lay down on top of you and Bo were to come and pile on top of
us- I'd be squished. You'd be squished, right?
Now imagine if you've got several kilometers of rock piling on top of you,
you're going to get really squished.
(10:26):
And so we've got this environment now over time as this organic matter is deposited,
where you've got super high pressure and super super high temperature.
Maybe a good analogy for you, for the average listener is if you've ever used
a slow cooker or even better, a pressure cooker.
So if you've got like a pot roast, right? You start off with this big chunk of meat.
Over time, what you're doing to that piece of meat is you're adding pressure
(10:49):
and temperature and what happens?
Well, you cook it. You cook it, right? It falls apart. Falls apart.
Yeah. And so that's a big part of the process of getting organic matter and
turning it into fossil fuels or oil and gas. This is pressure and temperature component.
And if you just kind of think in your head, you've got this pot roast in your
pressure cooker, you're adding pressure and temperature.
And over time, that pot roast, you want to kind of get it nice and tender,
(11:13):
right? So it really just kind of like falls apart. heart.
And that's a big part of what's happening to the organic matter.
It's just there's much more pressure and temperature.
Right. That's starting to break down. Right. Then on your pot roast in your kitchen.
And so you have this whole cooking process that starts to create the oil and gas.
Now your pot roast in your kitchen might take 30 or 60 minutes to cook,
(11:37):
right? These things take millions of years.
So it's significantly longer. Right.
But I guess just while we're talking about the pot roast, if you're cooking
in your kitchen and you start with pork ribs or pot roast and you throw them
in your slow cooker, you're going to end up with a different product, right?
With oil and gas, it's kind of the same thing.
(11:57):
Depending on what you start with will determine what you end up with.
Okay. Yeah. So there's different qualities or different kind of materials that
end up as oil and gas. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
For oil, when I say, or when the average person hears oil, in your mind,
do you think that when people talk about oils, it's just like one thing? It's like olive oil?
(12:20):
Yeah, something like liquidy that's kind of sticky, viscous.
Something like that. Yeah.
So I guess maybe it would be kind of like the oils in your kitchen.
There's different kinds. There's different grades.
And it really just depends on if you want to get into the nitty gritty,
it kind of depends on the molecular structure and how big those molecules are
(12:42):
will kind of dictate what kind of oil or gas you're going to get.
But tying it back to sort of the pot roast ribs analogy, depending on what you
start off with is going to give you a different product in the end.
And so for oil and gas, you've got natural gas, light oil. Some people call that condensate.
(13:02):
You've got heavy oil, crude oil. So there's different kinds of oils.
You have coal. Coal is another type of oil and gas.
And so if I said to you, okay, I'm 100 million years ago and I've got two scenarios.
I've got scenario one where I've got a bunch of like hard woody trees that die,
get buried and deposited over time and they turn into something.
(13:24):
And then I've got a whole bunch of algae.
You know, it's mushy algae that deposits to the bottom of the ocean deposited
and gets turned into something.
And I say, one of those things is going to turn into oil.
And one of those things is going to turn into coal.
Do you think the mushy algae is going to turn into oil or the woody trees?
(13:46):
Probably the woody trees, just considering that one of them is already harder
than the other one? Algae would actually be more like oil.
I'll try and paint it here for you so that the trees, generally things that
are more solid or woody would end up being something solid like coal.
(14:07):
Algae would probably be the easiest one to imagine or like a swampy environment.
Would tend to be something more like oil.
So then I guess the next part of it is the gas component of it.
And really the difference between oil and gas is really just how long you cook
it for. And so, okay, let me ask you this.
(14:27):
So we talked about like the actual molecule of oil and gas, right?
They're different sizes.
Right. Based on the amount of carbon. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
So hydrocarbon, right? So that, that would be hydrocarbon would be what we we
call in oil and gas because it's made of hydrogen and carbon.
There you go, right? Gotcha. Yeah.
(14:48):
So you've got these chains, these hydrocarbon chains, which are made of primarily hydrogen and carbon.
And depending on how big those chains are is going to determine what type of
oil and gas you have. Right, the end product.
So if I've got oil and gas, do you think gas is a longer molecule or a smaller molecule?
(15:09):
Probably a smaller molecule. That's right. Why do you think?
Just because gas is lighter.
Yeah. So less molecules, less weight. Yep. You're exactly right.
Natural gas is actually mostly methane. And methane, I don't know if you took
any chemistry classes, you know how many carbons are in methane? I think it's four.
One. Right. Yeah. Methane is one. Butane. Butane. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
(15:33):
Natural gas is really just kind of like the very, very light hydrocarbons.
And then the more carbons you have, the longer those chains get,
the longer those chains get, the heavier the oil gets.
So when people are talking about light oil or heavy oil, really all they're
saying is there are more carbons in the molecule or a longer, bigger chain.
(15:57):
And so the reason that's important, if we go back to our pressure cooker example,
the longer you have that meat in your pressure cooker, the more it's going to fall apart.
So it's the same thing with oil and gas. If your organic matter starts off as
this big chunk of material and you only have it in the pressure cooker for a
little bit, it's only going to break down so much.
(16:19):
Okay. The longer you have it in the pressure cooker, the higher the temperature,
the higher the pressure, the more it's going to break down.
Right. So those larger molecules will start breaking apart into smaller and smaller pieces.
Yeah. Until you can have ones that are small enough to become gases.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Let's say I've got an oil and gas reservoir.
(16:39):
If that reservoir is really deep, so there's high pressure and high temperature,
do you think that's going to have more or less gas?
Probably more gas content. Yeah, exactly. Okay.
Yeah. So that's kind of a generic rule of thumb is the deeper your oil and gas
is, the longer it's been there, right? Because it's deposited over time.
The longer it's been there, the longer it's been cooking.
(17:02):
The deeper it is, the more pressure and temperature you have,
which also helps with decomposition.
So generally speaking, the deeper your oil and gas is, the more gas you have relative to oil. Okay.
Now it's kind of like those rule of thumb things, right?
There's obviously going to be some exceptions there, but just to kind of help
you picture in your head, you know, oil and gas is formed, right?
(17:24):
So it's organic matter. And we talked about how it needs to cook to form.
Let's talk about what happens when it forms. So you have this oil and gas that gets created.
Well, now what? Let me ask you this. Have you ever made your own salad dressing before?
I've made a couple. Mom's going to judge you on this one. I've followed her
(17:44):
recipe a couple of times.
So what are the two main ingredients generally speaking in salad dressing?
Some sort of like olive oil and then like a balsamic vinegar.
Okay. You're off to a good start.
Mom approves. So you've got oil and vinegar, Right. And so one floats on top
of the other. Because it's less dense.
Right. So basically what we're talking about is relative densities.
(18:07):
And so oil will float on top when you're making your salad dressing.
And so like the salad dressing, when you're in the reservoir,
when this oil gets created, it has a tendency to want to rise up. So that's...
What happens is this oil and gas gets created and it's rising up over time,
right? This is not happening instantaneously.
(18:28):
And eventually what's going to happen is it's going to reach a barrier or what we call a trap.
Now this is for a conventional reservoir. We'll talk in a later episode about
unconventional reservoirs, but it's going to reach a trap.
And what's going to happen is it's going to start to accumulate.
And over time, this accumulation becomes what we call an an oil reservoir.
(18:50):
And so when I say an oil reservoir, like in your head, how big do you think these things are?
Just curious. Well, I live in Calgary and I live right next to the Glenmore Reservoir.
And it's a large body of water, I guess, similar to a lake.
So maybe if I'm thinking about a reservoir, I'm thinking about something about
a lake kind of size. Yeah, that's probably a good guess.
(19:13):
Obviously, it depends on the reservoir and how everything thing was deposited.
But for the average listener out there, just to put it in perspective,
some of these reservoirs can be as large as a city or downtown Calgary, right?
So there's massive reservoirs of oil and gas out there just to,
again, some are smaller, some are bigger, but just to put sort of like a scale,
they're generally quite large.
(19:35):
And so I think one of the important concepts to talk about here is that when
we talk about a reservoir, I think one of the the terms that people use is a pool of oil.
And so I just want to clarify something here.
It's not like when we talk about an oil and gas reservoir that there's this
giant ball of oil down there and we just kind of like stick a straw in and suck it out.
(20:00):
Below the surface of the earth, it's all rock. And inside the rock are little
pore spaces. And we'll talk about this a little bit more on the next episode.
But the oil and gas is actually inside the rock. Right. It's trapped inside
there. It's trapped inside there. Yeah.
Two of the important concepts we'll talk about probably next episode will be
permeability and porosity.
(20:22):
Permeability is how something flows. And porosity, like the pores in your skin,
is the ability for the rock to store oil.
And so I guess just quickly to wrap up, let's talk a little bit about permeability
because I think that's an important concept to finish up here.
I kind of gave you a bit of a clue.
Permeability is how things move. Maybe give us your interpretation of what permeability is.
(20:47):
So I'm thinking of something like a sponge.
So I can have some liquid flow in and out of the sponge because there's little
holes that it can kind of flow through.
Through but if i am using like
a rock or a brick instead then less
of that water would be able to flow through it yep so the more like spaces you
(21:12):
kind of have that are interconnected within a structure and that kind of increases
the amount of permeability because you can penetrate that that surface more.
Yeah, it's really just permeability is just how easily something can move through.
You know, if you're living in an apartment and your neighbor next to you likes
(21:33):
to play the drums and he likes to play the drums really loud,
if you've got a thin wall, that wall is likely gonna be permeable to sound,
meaning sound can get through easily.
Whereas, let's say you've got a 12-inch concrete wall in between you and your
neighbor, that wall is going to be way less permeable to sound,
(21:55):
and you're not going to hear it as much.
So permeability is important because you've got this oil and gas that's being
created three, four kilometers below the surface of the earth or deeper,
and it's going to migrate up.
But the only way it's going to migrate up, right, because it wants to float
like in the salad dressing, the only way it's going to migrate up is if there's permeability.
So if there's permeable rock above it, the oil and gas over time will find its
(22:20):
way up until it reaches relatively impermeable barrier that's going to act as
basically like a trap like we talked about. Okay.
So that's really the whole concept of the formation of the fossil fuels,
right? So organic matter is alive.
It dies. It gets buried.
Over time, it gets deposited deeper and deeper. As it gets deeper and deeper,
(22:44):
the pressure goes up. The temperature goes up. It starts to cook.
It turns into oil and gas.
The oil and gas, because of its relative density, like you said,
starts to migrate up until it reaches an impermeable barrier,
in which case it starts to accumulate over time and creates an oil reservoir.
So permeability is really important. This is definitely not going to be the
(23:08):
last time we're talking about it. We'll get into it more next episode.
It'll become really important once we start talking about fracking, but that's pretty.
Why don't you recap to me? What do we talk about today? Okay, so from fossil to fuel.
So we're talking about the formation of fossil fuels and how it all gets there,
(23:30):
how it accumulates in a reservoir.
So basically you start with organic matter, which can be plants, can be animals.
That matter ends up
dying and gets deposited deeper and deeper into the
earth where the pressure and temperature increases and
transforms that product into
(23:50):
oil and gas then oil wants
to flow upwards due to its density so
it flows through the rocks which are i guess
semi-permeable which is a concept we'll talk
more about in the next episode and it'll flow until
it reaches a rock that isn't as permeable
(24:10):
so then it'll accumulate there and then form a
reservoir and that's the formation of fossil fuels you got it from fossil fuel
no that's perfect really the formation of fossil fuels is is exactly what you
just said and that really is probably one of of the most important parts because
I think it's probably one of the most misunderstood parts.
(24:32):
A lot of the stuff that we'll talk about later, I don't think is understood
at all, but it's important to sort of clarify that part of it.
So yeah, thanks a lot for coming in, man. Awesome. One down.
Who knows how many more to go. Yeah. Thanks everyone for tuning in for the first
episode of this series from Fossil to Fuel 2.0.
(24:52):
We talked about formation of fossil fuels today. On the next episode,
episode two, We're going to talk about rock geology.
We're going to get a little bit more into porosity and permeability.
Two really important things. All right. And we're going to talk about the rocks themselves.
Right up your alley, of course. The geology, different types of rocks in the formation.
I'll be able to contribute a little bit here. Yeah.
(25:14):
And we're going to talk also about the oil and gas where it's found.
How the heck do we find this stuff?
Where is it? And how do we find it? So thanks everyone for tuning in.
Until next time. See you later. From fossil to fuel with Brendan McDougall and William Belevance.
Subscribe now on your favorite podcast platform and share with your network.
From Fossil to Fuel with Brendan McDougall and William Belevance.
This is Oil & Gas 101, taking you through the entire fundamentals from geology
to refining without the use of a textbook.
Hey everybody, I'm Brendan McDougall. Welcome to the podcast from Fossil to Fuel 2.0.
And I'm William Belevance. I'm Brendan's younger brother, so I'm the fuel and he's the fossil.
(00:29):
Nice. I'm the older one. The older and wiser one.
Let's get started. Just wanted to start things off for the listeners here,
do a bit of an introduction.
My name is Brendan McDougall. I'm a professional engineer. I work in oil and gas.
Worked in a few different roles, a few different companies.
And for those of you who haven't listened to this before, this is from Fossil to Fuel.
(00:52):
It's a podcast about the fundamentals of oil and gas. And really kind of what
we're after here is sort of a wide range, a wide spectrum for the entire industry.
And so for anyone who's new to oil and gas, anyone who works in oil and gas,
who's non-technical or really for the general public.
Anytime that you're looking for something in oil and gas, typically online,
(01:17):
you're probably going to run into one of two scenarios.
One is you're going to find something that's way too technical for your level
of expertise. expertise, or two, you're probably just going to find like a narrow segment of it.
And so I know even for myself, when I started off in my career back in 2008,
I really didn't know too much about oil and gas.
(01:38):
And so, you know, you go to Google something online and I can find anything.
I mean, really, there's not a whole lot on oil and gas that has gotten a little
bit better over the last decade.
But even still, like there's not a whole lot out there.
And so, you know, that's kind of the drive to where this whole thing came from
is to create some form of digital media that was really the fundamentals of
(02:02):
oil and gas, really for anybody.
And so I came up with this concept, oh, geez, probably four or five years ago,
where myself as a technical person in oil and gas, I wanted to learn more about
the financial side and the business.
So I started educating myself and taking some courses to learn more about that.
(02:23):
And I went, well, heck, if I'm seeing the benefit to learn more about the financial
and business side, even from a fundamental perspective,
there's an opportunity for me to reciprocate and provide some material like
this. And so that's kind of where this whole concept came from.
And so it's from fossil to fuel because it's literally the whole spectrum of
(02:44):
oil and gas from fossil, how everything was formed, right through to fuel,
like the diesel or gasoline that we burn in our cars.
So it's literally the formation, geology, drilling, fracking,
production reserves, all the way through to refining. It's the whole thing at a high level.
And so for those of you who have listened to the previous version of the podcast,
(03:05):
because this is really from Fossil to Fuel 2.0.
I spent the last four years sort of designing and recording and making this
from Fossil to Fuel podcast on my own.
I did it in my home office with my crappy laptop and my $100 mic I got off Amazon,
went through, did this whole thing.
And I actually released the podcast last October, 2019.
(03:29):
Very well received, but generally the consensus was that, that,
well, for one, the audio quality sucked because it's just me in my home office.
And two, the format of it, which was really kind of just me lecturing the audience,
wasn't as interactive as your typical podcast. So we made some changes.
(03:49):
We're redoing this whole thing.
We're recording live at the Ear Candy Studio. Shout out to Bo for helping us out here.
So we're redoing the podcast professionally. Hopefully my voice sounds quite
a bit better this time around than it did the first time.
And we brought in a co-host. And so the concept there is to bring in an individual who.
(04:11):
Who can help make the process a little bit more interactive,
more of a conversation or dialogue than a lecture.
And to bring in someone who is probably more representative of the average person
in society, who probably knows a little bit about oil and gas from reading it
in the news or online digital media.
But someone who is a little bit more relatable to the average person.
(04:34):
And so who better to bring in than my brother?
My brother, William Belovance, is joining us today and really for the remainder
of the podcast series to help kind of star the show and have the average person
relate to learning about oil and gas, literally from fossil to fuel.
So, William, welcome to the show.
(04:55):
For the listeners out there, maybe just tell us a little bit about yourself. Awesome.
Hi, everyone. I'm William Belovance, and I'm a student in natural sciences,
concentrating in geology and mathematics.
I have a foundational background in geology.
I don't have too much background in oil and gas.
(05:16):
My main focus in geology has been on earth systems and climate,
but I'm hoping to land on some of the same questions that other people might have.
So without further ado, let's get started. Right on. Thanks.
So for everybody listening out there from all of our family dinners and stuff,
William's probably got a little bit of an intro to what oil and gas is and what his brother does.
(05:39):
I think it'd be fairly representative here. So from fossil to fuel.
So when I say fossil fuel, what do you think a fossil fuel is when people talk about that?
Well, probably just from the name, you can kind of understand that it's a fuel,
some form of energy that has come from a fossil, which is something that was
(06:01):
buried underground of something that was previously alive.
So, from a fossil fuel, that's about what it is.
Yeah. No, no, yeah, no, that's good. That's good. Good. So a fossil fuel,
oil and gas basically is what it is.
When we talk about the origin of fossil fuels, one of the questions I field
(06:22):
a lot is dinosaurs, right?
So a lot of people think fossil fuels all came from dinosaurs.
And while that is true, the analogy I always give is think about it this way.
Fossil fuels are derived from organic matter. So organic matter matter is really
just something that was alive at some point in time.
(06:43):
And so, for fossil fuels, we're typically talking about hundreds of millions of years ago.
A fossil fuel or organic matter was something that was alive.
And so, while dinosaurs were alive 100 million years ago, really,
they would make up a very, very small percentage of what ends up becoming a fossil fuel.
And so, the example I would give today is that if you go in a forest and there's
(07:07):
a bear, bear and, you know, bear dies over time, gets deposited,
buried, and the bear becomes oil and gas.
Relative to everything else in that forest, the bear is just like a very,
very, very infinitesimal, small amount of organic matter, right?
It's everything else. It's the trees, the bushes, the grass.
So a lot of oil and gas or fossil fuels, while they would have been derived
(07:32):
from dinosaurs or other animals living at the time,
the vast, vast majority of oil and gas originated as either plant life or some
form of like algae or bacteria.
Right. Yeah. So I guess just wanted to clear up a little bit of a misconception there.
So fossil fuels, cool. So they started off as organic matter.
(07:53):
What do you know about the process of deposition? Can you tell me a little bit
about what you understand of that process?
So for deposition, for example, if it happens in certain environments,
like at the bottom of a lake, for example, where it has a river feeding into
the lake, bringing in sediments.
So if something, some fish, for example,
(08:15):
dies and its body sinks to the bottom of the lake,
then through this river sediments are deposited
on top of it and over time more and
more layers get deposited and other areas
get eroded to net produce a deeper and deeper lithification of of those fossils
(08:36):
yeah that's exactly right so if something is living it dies if it's in an aquatic
environment falls to the bottom of the lake or the ocean and over time material
gets deposited on top of it.
Same kind of thing is if you look at archaeologists who are digging up the ruins
of the Roman Empire per se, right? So that was like 2000 years ago.
(08:56):
And so they're having to dig up all of these excavations because over time,
dirt and rock and sediment has been deposited on top of that.
Now think the Roman Empire was only 2000 years ago. Imagine how deep these deposits
get if if you're talking about 100 million years ago, right?
And so the deposition process is important because as these pieces of organic
(09:22):
matter get deeper and deeper under the surface of the earth.
What do you think happens with pressure and temperature?
From what I understand, as you get deeper into the earth, more and more stuff
piles on top of each other. So the pressure would increase.
And as well the heat comes
from the center of the earth so as you get closer to
(09:43):
the center temperature increases as well yeah exactly
right so you got pressure going up you got temperature going up like william
said the closer to the center of the earth which is i think most people would
probably be able to guess that it's hot at the center of the earth so the deeper
you get the hotter it gets and then in terms of pressure i mean really just
think about it you know if you you have a doggy pile, right?
(10:05):
For me, I don't know what that is. If you have people pile on top of you,
you can feel the weight of people on top of you, pushing down on you.
So if I were to lay down on top of you and Bo were to come and pile on top of
us- I'd be squished. You'd be squished, right?
Now imagine if you've got several kilometers of rock piling on top of you,
you're going to get really squished.
(10:26):
And so we've got this environment now over time as this organic matter is deposited,
where you've got super high pressure and super super high temperature.
Maybe a good analogy for you, for the average listener is if you've ever used
a slow cooker or even better, a pressure cooker.
So if you've got like a pot roast, right? You start off with this big chunk of meat.
Over time, what you're doing to that piece of meat is you're adding pressure
(10:49):
and temperature and what happens?
Well, you cook it. You cook it, right? It falls apart. Falls apart.
Yeah. And so that's a big part of the process of getting organic matter and
turning it into fossil fuels or oil and gas. This is pressure and temperature component.
And if you just kind of think in your head, you've got this pot roast in your
pressure cooker, you're adding pressure and temperature.
And over time, that pot roast, you want to kind of get it nice and tender,
(11:13):
right? So it really just kind of like falls apart. heart.
And that's a big part of what's happening to the organic matter.
It's just there's much more pressure and temperature.
Right. That's starting to break down. Right. Then on your pot roast in your kitchen.
And so you have this whole cooking process that starts to create the oil and gas.
Now your pot roast in your kitchen might take 30 or 60 minutes to cook,
(11:37):
right? These things take millions of years.
So it's significantly longer. Right.
But I guess just while we're talking about the pot roast, if you're cooking
in your kitchen and you start with pork ribs or pot roast and you throw them
in your slow cooker, you're going to end up with a different product, right?
With oil and gas, it's kind of the same thing.
(11:57):
Depending on what you start with will determine what you end up with.
Okay. Yeah. So there's different qualities or different kind of materials that
end up as oil and gas. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
For oil, when I say, or when the average person hears oil, in your mind,
do you think that when people talk about oils, it's just like one thing? It's like olive oil?
(12:20):
Yeah, something like liquidy that's kind of sticky, viscous.
Something like that. Yeah.
So I guess maybe it would be kind of like the oils in your kitchen.
There's different kinds. There's different grades.
And it really just depends on if you want to get into the nitty gritty,
it kind of depends on the molecular structure and how big those molecules are
(12:42):
will kind of dictate what kind of oil or gas you're going to get.
But tying it back to sort of the pot roast ribs analogy, depending on what you
start off with is going to give you a different product in the end.
And so for oil and gas, you've got natural gas, light oil. Some people call that condensate.
(13:02):
You've got heavy oil, crude oil. So there's different kinds of oils.
You have coal. Coal is another type of oil and gas.
And so if I said to you, okay, I'm 100 million years ago and I've got two scenarios.
I've got scenario one where I've got a bunch of like hard woody trees that die,
get buried and deposited over time and they turn into something.
(13:24):
And then I've got a whole bunch of algae.
You know, it's mushy algae that deposits to the bottom of the ocean deposited
and gets turned into something.
And I say, one of those things is going to turn into oil.
And one of those things is going to turn into coal.
Do you think the mushy algae is going to turn into oil or the woody trees?
(13:46):
Probably the woody trees, just considering that one of them is already harder
than the other one? Algae would actually be more like oil.
I'll try and paint it here for you so that the trees, generally things that
are more solid or woody would end up being something solid like coal.
(14:07):
Algae would probably be the easiest one to imagine or like a swampy environment.
Would tend to be something more like oil.
So then I guess the next part of it is the gas component of it.
And really the difference between oil and gas is really just how long you cook
it for. And so, okay, let me ask you this.
(14:27):
So we talked about like the actual molecule of oil and gas, right?
They're different sizes.
Right. Based on the amount of carbon. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
So hydrocarbon, right? So that, that would be hydrocarbon would be what we we
call in oil and gas because it's made of hydrogen and carbon.
There you go, right? Gotcha. Yeah.
(14:48):
So you've got these chains, these hydrocarbon chains, which are made of primarily hydrogen and carbon.
And depending on how big those chains are is going to determine what type of
oil and gas you have. Right, the end product.
So if I've got oil and gas, do you think gas is a longer molecule or a smaller molecule?
(15:09):
Probably a smaller molecule. That's right. Why do you think?
Just because gas is lighter.
Yeah. So less molecules, less weight. Yep. You're exactly right.
Natural gas is actually mostly methane. And methane, I don't know if you took
any chemistry classes, you know how many carbons are in methane? I think it's four.
One. Right. Yeah. Methane is one. Butane. Butane. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
(15:33):
Natural gas is really just kind of like the very, very light hydrocarbons.
And then the more carbons you have, the longer those chains get,
the longer those chains get, the heavier the oil gets.
So when people are talking about light oil or heavy oil, really all they're
saying is there are more carbons in the molecule or a longer, bigger chain.
(15:57):
And so the reason that's important, if we go back to our pressure cooker example,
the longer you have that meat in your pressure cooker, the more it's going to fall apart.
So it's the same thing with oil and gas. If your organic matter starts off as
this big chunk of material and you only have it in the pressure cooker for a
little bit, it's only going to break down so much.
(16:19):
Okay. The longer you have it in the pressure cooker, the higher the temperature,
the higher the pressure, the more it's going to break down.
Right. So those larger molecules will start breaking apart into smaller and smaller pieces.
Yeah. Until you can have ones that are small enough to become gases.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Let's say I've got an oil and gas reservoir.
(16:39):
If that reservoir is really deep, so there's high pressure and high temperature,
do you think that's going to have more or less gas?
Probably more gas content. Yeah, exactly. Okay.
Yeah. So that's kind of a generic rule of thumb is the deeper your oil and gas
is, the longer it's been there, right? Because it's deposited over time.
The longer it's been there, the longer it's been cooking.
(17:02):
The deeper it is, the more pressure and temperature you have,
which also helps with decomposition.
So generally speaking, the deeper your oil and gas is, the more gas you have relative to oil. Okay.
Now it's kind of like those rule of thumb things, right?
There's obviously going to be some exceptions there, but just to kind of help
you picture in your head, you know, oil and gas is formed, right?
(17:24):
So it's organic matter. And we talked about how it needs to cook to form.
Let's talk about what happens when it forms. So you have this oil and gas that gets created.
Well, now what? Let me ask you this. Have you ever made your own salad dressing before?
I've made a couple. Mom's going to judge you on this one. I've followed her
(17:44):
recipe a couple of times.
So what are the two main ingredients generally speaking in salad dressing?
Some sort of like olive oil and then like a balsamic vinegar.
Okay. You're off to a good start.
Mom approves. So you've got oil and vinegar, Right. And so one floats on top
of the other. Because it's less dense.
Right. So basically what we're talking about is relative densities.
(18:07):
And so oil will float on top when you're making your salad dressing.
And so like the salad dressing, when you're in the reservoir,
when this oil gets created, it has a tendency to want to rise up. So that's...
What happens is this oil and gas gets created and it's rising up over time,
right? This is not happening instantaneously.
(18:28):
And eventually what's going to happen is it's going to reach a barrier or what we call a trap.
Now this is for a conventional reservoir. We'll talk in a later episode about
unconventional reservoirs, but it's going to reach a trap.
And what's going to happen is it's going to start to accumulate.
And over time, this accumulation becomes what we call an an oil reservoir.
(18:50):
And so when I say an oil reservoir, like in your head, how big do you think these things are?
Just curious. Well, I live in Calgary and I live right next to the Glenmore Reservoir.
And it's a large body of water, I guess, similar to a lake.
So maybe if I'm thinking about a reservoir, I'm thinking about something about
a lake kind of size. Yeah, that's probably a good guess.
(19:13):
Obviously, it depends on the reservoir and how everything thing was deposited.
But for the average listener out there, just to put it in perspective,
some of these reservoirs can be as large as a city or downtown Calgary, right?
So there's massive reservoirs of oil and gas out there just to,
again, some are smaller, some are bigger, but just to put sort of like a scale,
they're generally quite large.
(19:35):
And so I think one of the important concepts to talk about here is that when
we talk about a reservoir, I think one of the the terms that people use is a pool of oil.
And so I just want to clarify something here.
It's not like when we talk about an oil and gas reservoir that there's this
giant ball of oil down there and we just kind of like stick a straw in and suck it out.
(20:00):
Below the surface of the earth, it's all rock. And inside the rock are little
pore spaces. And we'll talk about this a little bit more on the next episode.
But the oil and gas is actually inside the rock. Right. It's trapped inside
there. It's trapped inside there. Yeah.
Two of the important concepts we'll talk about probably next episode will be
permeability and porosity.
(20:22):
Permeability is how something flows. And porosity, like the pores in your skin,
is the ability for the rock to store oil.
And so I guess just quickly to wrap up, let's talk a little bit about permeability
because I think that's an important concept to finish up here.
I kind of gave you a bit of a clue.
Permeability is how things move. Maybe give us your interpretation of what permeability is.
(20:47):
So I'm thinking of something like a sponge.
So I can have some liquid flow in and out of the sponge because there's little
holes that it can kind of flow through.
Through but if i am using like
a rock or a brick instead then less
of that water would be able to flow through it yep so the more like spaces you
(21:12):
kind of have that are interconnected within a structure and that kind of increases
the amount of permeability because you can penetrate that that surface more.
Yeah, it's really just permeability is just how easily something can move through.
You know, if you're living in an apartment and your neighbor next to you likes
(21:33):
to play the drums and he likes to play the drums really loud,
if you've got a thin wall, that wall is likely gonna be permeable to sound,
meaning sound can get through easily.
Whereas, let's say you've got a 12-inch concrete wall in between you and your
neighbor, that wall is going to be way less permeable to sound,
(21:55):
and you're not going to hear it as much.
So permeability is important because you've got this oil and gas that's being
created three, four kilometers below the surface of the earth or deeper,
and it's going to migrate up.
But the only way it's going to migrate up, right, because it wants to float
like in the salad dressing, the only way it's going to migrate up is if there's permeability.
So if there's permeable rock above it, the oil and gas over time will find its
(22:20):
way up until it reaches relatively impermeable barrier that's going to act as
basically like a trap like we talked about. Okay.
So that's really the whole concept of the formation of the fossil fuels,
right? So organic matter is alive.
It dies. It gets buried.
Over time, it gets deposited deeper and deeper. As it gets deeper and deeper,
(22:44):
the pressure goes up. The temperature goes up. It starts to cook.
It turns into oil and gas.
The oil and gas, because of its relative density, like you said,
starts to migrate up until it reaches an impermeable barrier,
in which case it starts to accumulate over time and creates an oil reservoir.
So permeability is really important. This is definitely not going to be the
(23:08):
last time we're talking about it. We'll get into it more next episode.
It'll become really important once we start talking about fracking, but that's pretty.
Why don't you recap to me? What do we talk about today? Okay, so from fossil to fuel.
So we're talking about the formation of fossil fuels and how it all gets there,
(23:30):
how it accumulates in a reservoir.
So basically you start with organic matter, which can be plants, can be animals.
That matter ends up
dying and gets deposited deeper and deeper into the
earth where the pressure and temperature increases and
transforms that product into
(23:50):
oil and gas then oil wants
to flow upwards due to its density so
it flows through the rocks which are i guess
semi-permeable which is a concept we'll talk
more about in the next episode and it'll flow until
it reaches a rock that isn't as permeable
(24:10):
so then it'll accumulate there and then form a
reservoir and that's the formation of fossil fuels you got it from fossil fuel
no that's perfect really the formation of fossil fuels is is exactly what you
just said and that really is probably one of of the most important parts because
I think it's probably one of the most misunderstood parts.
(24:32):
A lot of the stuff that we'll talk about later, I don't think is understood
at all, but it's important to sort of clarify that part of it.
So yeah, thanks a lot for coming in, man. Awesome. One down.
Who knows how many more to go. Yeah. Thanks everyone for tuning in for the first
episode of this series from Fossil to Fuel 2.0.
(24:52):
We talked about formation of fossil fuels today. On the next episode,
episode two, We're going to talk about rock geology.
We're going to get a little bit more into porosity and permeability.
Two really important things. All right. And we're going to talk about the rocks themselves.
Right up your alley, of course. The geology, different types of rocks in the formation.
I'll be able to contribute a little bit here. Yeah.
(25:14):
And we're going to talk also about the oil and gas where it's found.
How the heck do we find this stuff?
Where is it? And how do we find it? So thanks everyone for tuning in.
Until next time. See you later. From fossil to fuel with Brendan McDougall and William Belevance.
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