PETROLEUM PRODUCTION
	
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1)	How much oil is consumed daily in the US in barrels? In gallons? How much of each barrel is used to produce gasoline? Diesel?
a.	A single barrel of crude equals 42 gallons. And Americans consume about 20 million of them every day. Roughly 50% of every barrel goes to finished gasoline, while another 15% to diesel.
2)	What are the four primary tasks of an oil refinery? What is the primary purpose of these stages?
a.	 distillation, hydro-cleaning, cracking, and blending. Each stage is designed to create more exact and more pure feed stocks.
3)	In a few sentences, explain how distillation separates crude oil into different hydrocarbons.
a.	 A furnace connected to this tower begins to boil the oil to upwards of 700 degrees Fahrenheit. As the heat intensifies, different hydrocarbon molecules within the crude begin to vaporize at different temperatures. Now separated, these vapors rise within the tower, cool, condense, and are then drawn off at specific levels. The lightest hydrocarbons, like the liquid gases used to make aspirin, rise to the top, while the heavier ones used in motor oils and road materials remain toward the bottom.
4)	What are the main products of crude fractionation? You should be able to list seven.
a.	 natural gas, which has to be stored under pressure, stored in this container. We have a light gasoline product, a heavier gasoline product called naphtha. We have jet fuel range and diesel range products. We have gas oil range products. And we have residuals like asphalt, or in this case, this is a sample of coke.
5)	What is one of the main contaminants removed from crude oil? How is the collected contaminant used?
a.	Sulfur. It is used in jet-fuel.
6)	What is the purpose of cracking? What does it do to the oil?
a.	Cracking shatters larger complex hydrocarbon molecules into simpler, more useful ones, which are then made into finished products. This can be done either directly with intense heat or in combination with chemical catalysts. Cracking heavy gas oils into smaller hydrocarbon molecules creates this base oil used to power ships.
7)	What are some uses of byproducts of petroleum production that were accidentally discovered or used to produce new products?
a.	Propane is one of those fuels that nobody makes on purpose. It is a byproduct. And we've been able to basically, as an industry, build a business on a product that, in the early years of the industry was literally flared off as a waste product.
8)	Why are petroleum and propane more convenient fuels to deliver to consumers?
a.	Petroleum is in medicine, and products that we use almost every day, where as to propane is used for heating, cooking, and power. So both are used in individuals everyday lives.
9)	What is the most prolific byproduct of petroleum production?
a.	Paraffin wax is a byproduct of lubricant oil refining. Not only is it non-toxic, each year, it is shaped into more than 3 billion Crayola crayons, 1.5 billion paint balls, and 1 billion pounds of candle wax.
10)	How much of crude oil production is devoted to producing plastics?
a.	82 percent.