What is interesting in the oil and gas industry?

I need to write an essay about an aspect of the oil and gas industry, and I am looking for something interesting to write about. Is the any new and developing part of it? I was thinking the oil sands, but every one will do that, and I want to write about something innovative. Any ideas?What is interesting in the oil and gas industry?
This is your lucky day! I'm going to give this to you on a silver platter. See if you can find anything about thermal flooding. It might be called in-situ combustion or fire flooding.





Heavy oils (really thick and viscous) cannot be conventionally recovered. New research is being done on heating the oil up so that it becomes less viscous and more mobile (ex. at room temp wax wont flow, but heat it up and becomes less viscous and ';melts';). The standard technique is injecting steam, but it loses heat as it travels several miles down the well.





Air injection, is injecting regular air into the reservoir so that it meets the oil and oxygenates causing combustion. It does not burn with a flame, but more like smolders. This heats the reservoir up and produces CO2 that also makes the oil more mobile. Though you are burning a small percent of the oil down there, it will remove the rest of the oil. The combustion forms a front, like a wave, moving through the reservoir, heating and pushing the oil towards a second producing well (there is one you are injecting the air in and another abut 300 feet away that you are producing the oil out of) The heat also causes any water in the reservoir to become steam, which helps to distribute the heat.





hear are some quick bullets:





- Heat is generated within reservoir by continuously


injecting air (or oxygen-enriched air) and igniting


down hole spontaneously or by down hole heater





- Injected oxygen partially burns crude generating


heat and producing CO2, CO and steam





- The technique generates an in-place (in-situ)


combustion zone propagating inside the reservoir,


self-sustaining itself and creating an upgraded oil


bank (the wave) further downstream





- Recovery mainly relies on crude oil viscosity


reduction, expansion, distillation and solvent


extraction, among others





Advantages:


- Applicable to many crude oils up to 40 oAPI (really thick and viscous)





- More efficient heat generation than steam injection





- High displacement efficiency (removes a lot of oil)





-Air readily available (easy to access and cheap)





-Produces upgraded (lighter oil than original) oil





Disadvantages:


-Air compression (the injecting device) expensive





-Hard to control the combustion propagation; producing


equipment can be damaged (once combustion is started, it cant be stopped or controlled)





-Unburned oxygen not desired at the producers; (it has to be removed)





-Emulsion (oil and water mixed up) handling and corrosion problemsWhat is interesting in the oil and gas industry?
coal bed methane production: producing gas from uneconomic or mined coal seams via drill holes, usually with a local generator to convert the gas directly into electricity.





Downhole well logging: using electronic probes and cameras to map the path and features of oil wells.
Look up secondary and tertiary recovery as well as horizontal drilling. That will give you some food for thought.