The story of gas(oline)

Have you ever been filling up your car at the gas station and wondered where that smelly liquid comes from? When it costs an arm and a leg to fill up the tank then it’s got to be a long, expensive process, right? Well, I admit that I generally am watching the numbers next to the $ increase rapidly instead of thinking about how gas traveled to get to my car’s tank.

But it is a very important story with impacts to our country’s economy, national security, and energy future. Not to mention the personal impacts when you thought you could make those last 30 miles with the empty light on because, hey, Jeremy did it in Top Gear (go to 8:00 in the video for the real drama).

Watch Part 1 and Part 2.

Alright, back to gasoline. Here is the whole story in picture flowchart form. The very, very beginning is not pictured because black goo turning blacker doesn’t lend to a good picture. (I'm referring to animal and plant material slowly being compressed to create oil.) I start with an image I created because I couldn't find any good ones on Google.

Geophysics combined with geology leads to a well being drilled and oil extracted.

The oil is then taken to a refinery and makes its way toyour local gas station.

OK, so now in more detail. The story of gasoline starts with crude oil (made out of hydrocarbons; crude because it is unrefined) deep in the earth. We extract oil on land and from under the ocean. Let’s focus on the oil taken from beneath the ocean, say in the Gulf of Mexico, a place full of oil. The first step is to find it! This type of treasure hunting involves large ships running different types of surveys. Most likely a seismic survey (sends out vibrations and listens for them to come back) and maybe electromagnetic survey (sends out electrical energy which goes down into the earth and is recorded at a receiver on the seafloor) are run over an area in the ocean.  The data is processed by geophysicists who create a model of the subsurface. Then geophysicists consult with geologists to make sure the model make sense. An oil company then spends millions or billions of dollars to drill down to wear the oil is located (more on that technology in a later post). The oil is extracted and sent to a refinery where it is filtered into gasoline as well as other products like diesel fuel and kerosene. The refining process basically separates the oil by different boiling points with gasoline having a lower boiling point than kerosene or diesel fuel. Finally the gasoline is put into a tanker and delivered to your local gas station. The End.

So what are you actually paying for at the pump? Well, I had the same question and luckily for us the U.S. Energy Information Administration broke it down.

The breakdown of where the money goes for a gallon of gas.

I know this was a long story but it is an important one. This general story of gasoline glossed over some of the important issues behind this controversial energy product but it is a starting place for more detailed posts about some of the processes involved to get oil from below the ocean turned into gasoline for our cars.

I'll still always watch the numbers next to the $ when I fill up my car with gas but now I'll also think about the journey the oil took to get to the gas station and where my money is going.