SECTION III 

 2. RESEARCH IN THE PETROLEUM INDUSTRY 



By P. K. Frolich, G. H. B. Davis, and H. G. M. Fischer' 



Director, Chemical Division; Director, Research Division; and Manager, Process Division, respectively, Esso Laboratories, 



Standard Oil Development Company, Elizabeth, N. J. 



A n S T R A C T 



Research has played an important part in the period 

 of the most rapid growth of the polroloum industry. 

 It has been uidispcnsablc to industry in meeting tech- 

 nical problems arising from day to day. In produc- 

 tion, research has put on a scientific basis the locating 

 of oil reserves and made possible drilling to unprece- 

 dented depths and recovering the maximum yield of 

 oil. In manufacture, research has brought fuels and 

 lubricants to their present state of perfection, and 

 enabled refiners to supply the changing demands for 

 individual products with a minimum of loss through 

 byproducts of lesser value. The successful coordina- 

 tion of the various phases of technology, geology, 

 metallurgy, chemical engineering, etc., in the past, 

 promises to continue to assist in the growth of the 

 petroleum industry by overcoming technical obstacles 

 as they arc encountered, and by opening up new fields 

 of development. 



The eventual beneficiary of all the contributions of 

 research to the petroleum industry is the pulilic as a 

 whole. Improved methods involved in the field of 

 oil production not only facilitate obtaining oil from 

 the ground, but have the effect of conserving petroleum 

 resources. Thus, better prospecting and better oil re- 

 covery serve to expand oil reserves, and known reserves 

 instead of diminishing are growing from year to year. 

 Improved refining methods applied to automotive fuels 

 reduce the cost of gasoline while improving its per- 

 formance characteristics; and improved lubricant re- 

 fining: methods result in similar benefits to the users. 



Improvements in refining apply in the same way to all 

 other petroleum products. Moreover, improved re- 

 fining methods, besides bettering product quality, jI o 

 efifect a conservation of products. For example, crack- 

 ing permits of producing increasing percentages of 

 gasoline from crude to meet the proportionately larger 

 demand for gasoline than for the other products. 

 Other processes, such as polymerization, hydrogena- 

 tion, alkylation, etc., likewise permit of converting the 

 less useful to the more useful products. And finally, 

 the conversion of hydrocarbons to other types of 

 chemical compounds insures that every constituent of 

 petroleum will come to some useful end. 



The petroleum industry is directly a major factor in 

 industrial employment. The extent of its effect on 

 employment indirectly, through related industries, can 

 only be estimated, but is undoubtedly tremendous. 

 The growth of the industry to its present proportions 

 has all occurred within a relatively short space of time. 

 This growth has paralleled and can largely be attributed 

 to the continuous expansion of research in the industry. 

 And the uniform growth of industry as a whole, is 

 evidence of the widespread distribution of the fruits of 

 research throughout the industry. On the basis of 

 accomplishments to date, research under the present 

 policies in the petroleum industry is stimulating the 

 manufacture with lower losses of better products at 

 lower costs. 



•The authors wish to expre.'ss their thanks to Mr. R. O. Sloane tor his diligent 

 efforts in compilinR and organizing the work presented herewith. 



Introduction 



Tiie inception of tlio petroleum industry witii the 

 successful drilling of the first oil wells some 80 years 

 ago, was followed by a gradual and continuous growth 

 which at the turn of the century had led to an annual 

 domestic crude oil production of 63,621,000 barrels. 

 Impressive as this may have appeared to an earlier 

 generation, it now seems a rather modest growth com- 

 pared to the stibsequent expansion which has increascfl 

 this figure approximately twentj'-fold to 1,264,256,000 

 barrels in 19.39. The importance of this development — 

 144 



which may be followed from the upper curve in figure 

 32 — can best be appreciated from the fact that it has 

 brought the petioleum industry up to the rank of tl.c 

 fifth largest industry in the country. 



From the standpoint of the contribution of research, 

 we here have the example of an industry that from a 

 comparatively modest start has grown to large size 

 within a short span of years. During a large portion 

 of its earl}'^ history, the prospector plaj'cd a dominant 

 role in the petroleum industry. This was the period of 

 exploration and empire building. With the growing 



