Oil and gas

With the growing global demand for fossil fuels and energy sources, the oil and gas industry is focusing on particularly efficient energy systems.

Even oil deposits in extreme climatic zones and hostile environments are exploited despite the greater effort involved, because the raw material is scarce. Most deposits contain both oil and natural gas. Initially, the gas was considered a useless by-product of oil production and was flared on site. Today it is also used commercially and is pumped to the surface via separate pipelines. While at the beginning of the oil age the oil was still stored just below the surface, production methods today have to be much more complex. This applies to oil production facilities on land (onshore) as well as to drilling platforms or floating production systems (FPSO).

The oil production value chain can be divided into three main processes:

Upstream describes the exploration of oil fields and the extraction of fossil fuels.

Midstream is where the oil is transported and stored.

Downstream comprises processing and refining. Here, the oil is further split in the refineries using the cracking process. In addition to diesel and gasoline, intermediate products for the petrochemical industry and various end products such as liquefied gases (propane, butane) as well as lubricants, bitumen, sulphur, and much more are produced.